From an Apollo Magazine online interview (Feb 22, 2020):
McCullin is reluctant to place himself in the company of artists, partly because he never wants to feel that he’s ‘arrived’ – ‘The moment that happens, I know I’m finished’ – but also because of the nature of his material. ‘There’s a shadow that 
comes over my life when I think […] that I’ve earned my reputation out of other people’s downfall. I’ve photographed dead people and I’ve photographed dying people, and people looking at me who are about to be murdered in alleyways. So I carry the guilt of survival, the shame of not being able to help dying people.’
On top of a hill a few miles from Don McCullin’s house in Somerset is a dew pond, a perfectly circular artificial pond for watering livestock. Nobody knows how long it has been there; some dew ponds date back to prehistoric times, and it’s tempting to think that this one served the Bronze Age hill-fort that overlooks the site. McCullin is obsessed with the pond. For more than 30 years, whenever he has had the time, he has walked up the hill and stood there with his camera waiting for the right moment to take a photograph. Often, the moment never comes: he can spend hours there, just looking. ‘It’s as if it has a hold over me,’ he tells me when I visit him at home in early January. ‘I can’t leave it alone, I photograph it all the time. And yet I think I’ve done my best picture the first time I ever did it. I can’t tell you how.’
Well, when you get older, you are more fabulous, actually. You go through a lot of hard times in your life… and then, at this stage you get out of those bad situations quicker and they are less painful. You figure them out, and you move on. And I’m having the best time ever. I’m 71 now, it’s the best time ever, and I think at 81 it will be great. My mom [had] her best times when she was in her 90s. So I look forward to that.
“I don’t have this precious career as an actor that I had to preserve. I’m an older guy, I’ve had a career, and the most personal thing I’ve ever done was Mr. Show, so, in a way I’ve said my piece, so I just don’t have all that much to lose really compared to somebody who’s an actor for a living and dreaming of their own show. My daughter asked me this question. This was a kid who grew up in Hollywood. She said, “If it’s bad, how bad would it be?” And I thought, Well, it’s Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. The worst thing it would be, would be an experiment that just didn’t pan out, but an interesting one at the very least.”
This week the legendary actress, model and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini joins co-hosts Kate and Medaya to discuss her new theatrical production, Link Link Circus, her studies into animal behavior, and her long career in film and TV. 
Pamela Fiori’s career in magazine publishing spans more than forty years. She was editor In chief of Town & Count , America’s premier magazine for the affluent in America, for seventeen years. Before that, she was editor in chief of Travel + Leisure for fourteen years. 
Is being an editor in chief again something you’d ever think about doing?
