War photography is the new war poetry. ‘What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?’ The passing-bells are plangent still. They are rung now by the photojournalist. Don McCullin is Wilfred Owen incarnate – Owen, who carried photographs of the dead in his wallet – the foot soldier photographer, the combat veteran who had his own demons to deal with, the haunted witness, attending the roll-call in his darkroom. ‘It was like All Quiet on the Western Front. Men marching through the mist. Men I'd seen killed came up out of the mist of war to join me.’ The photograph is a prophesy in reverse, as Roland Barthes divined. Men-at-arms are shot and shot again, shot in black-and-white. The classic war photographs (photographs of the classic wars) are all in black-and-white. The dead and the wounded bleed black blood; the young bleed into the old; the poison bleeds out, eventually. In the meantime the bodies pile up. Contortionists, they practise composition. We goggle at them and try not to look.