Don McCullin is a photographer's photographer; that is to say, the type of photographer deeply respected by other photographers. In the mid 1960s he started a personal project documenting London's gangland backstreets while working as a photographic printer. One of his pictures was used by the Observer, which started his journey into photo-journalism. He headed off to document every major conflict in the late 1960s and 1970s, and readers of The Sunday Times magazine during the period when it was worth reading will not forget his gritty, but deeply humane, pictures of famine and war zones from Biafra to Vietnam.
In his latest book, India, the evidence of that humanity is found on every page. The pictures are simply superb, and there is an emotional engagement with the subject throughout. The style, of course, is straight documentary photography. There are no tricks here - the camera looks at its subjects and the subjects stare back through the pages of the book.
The images are timeless, dark, ghostly, near-Biblical, undated. The pictures are almost totally black and white, with print and reproduction values so high that they totally eclipse the few colour images.
It's a book with so many remarkable photographs that it's hard to chose a favourite. Is it the group gathering for morning prayer on the banks of the Ganges; the small figures carrying a suite of furniture through the streets of Calcutta; the disabled pilgrim from Aslamabad looking out at you from page 106 (right), or perhaps the surreal image of the elephant festival at Sonepur Mela - the kind of image, as it emerges duskily from the page, that makes you wonder if you're dreaming even as you look at it?
Frank Miller is an Irish Times photographer