Southern Frontiers: A Journey Across the Roman Empire

Beautiful book. Difficult to get hold of. Expensive as a result of limited supply.

Don McCullin is a gifted photographer (and the subject of a terrific documentary recently screened at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival). For students of antiquity and everyone who loves gorgeous black/white photography raised to artistry, this is a vital work.

Southern Frontiers of the Roman Empire. It is a very large book, with large beautiful black and white plates, two introductions one being by McCullin himself - the rest is all photo, with captions. I heard tell that McCullin used a Large Format camera with sheet film to capture these places, ranging from Palmyra to Baalbek and finishing off with desolate, bleak and soulful pictures of Hadrians Wall in winter - covered in snow they portray the Northern Frontier of Rome perfectly. Don McCullin is a genius and also my most favorite of artists and this is another masterpiece, as it's not his usual portraiture, reportage, landscape or still life (as in open skies) but a record of a personal trip through the Southern Frontiers of the Roman Empire. He captures what most photographers are never able to - the desolation, the beauty, the antiquity, the soul and spirit of the place - Leptus Magna in Black and White Large Format is something to behold - and with McCullins touch the feel of the place, the ghosts haunt every photograph and one is drawn into staring at the photo and losing oneself in thought. Every single photograph is a masterpiece in itself, and just focussing upon them can lead one to rupture or melancholy - as both states are expressed and made manifest in the photographs. And this book inspired me and kindled the dormant childhood interest in Rome i used to have and I long to visit Baalbek, Palmyra and Leptis Magna. Having visited Caerleon and seen remains of the Amphitheatre there I photographed it in Black and White MF film, and having studied my own photographs I realise BW is a perfect medium to record history with, yet I know I have not the spirit of McCullin, nor ever will as his work is beyond.

For those who are familiar with Don McCullin only through the current exhibition at the Imperial War Museum at Manchester and his previous reportage collections, this book will be a revelation. It is a truly beautiful book -- a masterpiece of photo- and book-printing. The photographs are darkly moody -- even what you can presume are the "sunny" ones. The overall effect is twofold -- a sense of unbearable sadness at the passage of a great civilization, now left only in stumps of ruins scattered across thousands of miles; and an immediate sense of longing to go and see what McCullin has seen --even though it is impossible for most of us to see exactly what McCullin has seen in composing and then printing these beautiful images.

One of his best projects, the pic of Hadrians Wall in the snow is really special, a McCullin classic.

Beautiful book!