This article is more than 7 months oldDon McCullin spent decades photographing war and carnage across the globe – then he retrained his lens on the Somerset countryside. As he turns 90, a new book celebrates his gorgeous still lifes and landscapesA pear and an apple in McCullin’s kitchen sink. All photographs and quotes by Don McCullinThu 9 Oct 2025 08.00 CESTLast modified on Sun 26 Oct 2025 12.49 CETFishermen collecting worms, Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset‘I took the slow train to London recently, a train which I don’t normally catch, and it stopped at Frome station, the sight of which released a sudden flood of memories taking me back some 85 years. It is 1940 and I’m a confused child of five, stepping out on to Frome’s platform holding a gas mask in one hand, and the hand of my little sister in the other. We were in a group of evacuees sent to the countryside to escape the London bombings.’ The Stillness of Life by Don McCullin is available to purchase from Gost books [This caption was amended on 26 October 2025. An earlier version said the fishermen were at Hinkley Point, when they are at Burnham-on-Sea, and the power station can be seen in the background.]Gladioli in my garden shed‘I never forgot the beautiful Somerset countryside and, decades later, while working for the Sunday Times, the editor told me about a village house for sale there. I jumped at the chance to take a look. The moment I walked into this 18th-century cottage and heard the rush of a stream below, I knew I’d found the place where I belonged. Over the years going to various wars, this corner of Somerset has saved and restored my sanity and given me a sense of balance, just witnessing the change of the seasons and soaking up the enduring peace and silence of the land’Industrial playground, the disused steel town of Consett, County DurhamThe landscapes in the book are gathered from throughout McCullin’s career – from early photographs of the industrial north of the UK, to India, Africa and more recent images taken closer to home. Shot to enhance a metallic light, lowering skies and the denuded trees; there can be a sense of foreboding and desolation in the landscapes, as if the photographer were contemplating the aftermath of a battle scene A pear and an apple in my kitchen sinkMcCullin has been creating still life arrangements in his garden shed at home in Somerset since the early 1980s. Each still life has been lyrically constructed with the natural – cut flowers (lilies, foxgloves, gladioli), fruit or fungi – often presented alongside beloved mementos of his travels; a bronze dragon from the orient, a junk shop vase, a Hindu goddessFoxgloves with Chinese figures and dragon‘In autumn, I liked to glean the hedgerows and scour the fields for berries, mushrooms and wild flowers which I’d arrange, altar-like, around favourite mementos of my travels, like my Asian bronzes. Inspired by the 16th century masters of Dutch still lifes, I tried to create a similar canvas with the photographic image. In a derelict shed in my garden, using soot from the chimney, I stippled the cracking walls to simulate the patina of age and create a tableau observed in the half-light of a grimy window’Hadrian’s Wall moments after a snowfall, Northumberland‘Today, approaching my 90th year, it is almost impossible to be scampering over farm gates and barbed wire as I once liked to do in the dawns and desolation of winter, practising patience in hostile weathers when the naked trees show their true character’ Horse with horse mushrooms from the fields in my old shedMcCullin maintains focus on texture in both his still lifes and landscapes – the delicacy of flower petals, the smooth wood of a statue, the contrast of water and mud. In these traditional genres, McCullin’s contemporary vision breathes new life and beauty into the everydayEarly morning, Gandak River, The Elephant Festival, Sonepur Mela, Patna, IndiaVast eternities are suggested in his expanses of desert sand, and biblical drama in his silver-edged cloudscapes. Any figures in the frame are incidental and merely contribute to the composition – a departure from the human- focused documentary work for which McCullin became knownCopying the Dutch masters in my garden shedMcCullin arranges disparate inanimate objects with fruits and flowers as a kind of shrine to pay respect to the idea of transience versus permanence. These self-styled altars act as a homage to beauty, to the changing seasons and the fleeting passage of timeA beautiful dew pond in my village with a strange sky, SomersetThe still lifes and landscapes are united by McCullin’s ability to both tell and print a compelling story within the frame. They demonstrate his mastery of lighting – using shadows and minimal highlights to create a sense of drama and depth, and to animate objects or create poetry within a landscapeSelf portrait in Crowthers reclamation yard, Isleworth‘I spent half a day lifting these statues into place. After I took this picture they all collapsed on to each other’ Tulips with a mind of their own‘My photographic passion might be waning – the darkroom days are numbered, the deadly chemistry is too much. I’m blessed after 70 years floating in that time capsule like an astronaut in space, suspended in the warm cocooning glow of the red light of what has been my life’s main purpose and an extraordinary adventure.’ McCullin’s first solo exhibition in New York, Don McCullin: A Desecrated Serenity, is at Hauser & Wirth New York until 8 November