I think I’ve waited long enough for this one. I realize there are a lot of articles and interviews and information about this photographer but, in my mind, Photographer Spotlight would not be complete without Steve McCurry. He is widely acknowledged as one of the best photographers in the industry, and has been for decades. His most famous image, the 1985 National Geographic cover “Afghan Girl” has inspired thousands of kids to pickup a camera and dream of becoming photographers.
If you are one of the few photographers to have never heard of Steve McCurry then this is your chance to be truly inspired. I know I am going to sound like a fan girl, but that’s probably because that is exactly what I am.
I will never forget the first time I saw Steve McCurry’s website. Of course, I had seen Afghan Girl, but I hadn’t really seen much else. It was the first time I have ever gotten chills looking at a photograph. And it wasn’t just one photo. It was nearly every single photo on his site. There is something unique about them, something that you can’t explain, but it’s there. Your eye is drawn in and you can’t look away. The colors are vibrant and rich, the composition is nearly flawless, and yet they are not posed or staged in any way.
Steve McCurry was born in Philadelphia in 1950. He became interested in photography while in college shooting for the Penn State newspaper. Once he graduated he worked for a local paper for two years and then left for India to freelance. He says it was there he learned to watch and wait on life. “If you wait people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view.”
His career jump-started the day he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion in 1979. He had met some men who talked him into going over to tell their story, to show how bad the fighting had gotten. They helped disguise him in native clothing and smuggled him across the border into Afghanistan. When he returned to the states he had rolls of film sewn into his clothes. The images he had gotten would be published around the world and were some of the first to show what was happening in that part of the world. His coverage won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, an award dedicated to photographers exhibiting exceptional courage and enterprise.
McCurry has since covered many different areas of war and conflict including the Iran-Iraq War, Beirut, the Gulf War, and he continues to cover the war in Afghanistan. Rather than focusing on the conflict itself, he concentrates on the human consequences, putting a face on it. McCurry is driven by an innate curiosity and sense of wonder about the world and everyone in it. He has an uncanny ability to cross boundaries of language and culture to capture stories of human experience. ”Most of my images are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person’s face. I try to convey what it is like to be that person, a person caught in a broader landscape that you could call the human condition.”
He seems to thrive on the adventure and has the reputation as one of the hardest of hard-core shooters. He’s been arrested in Pakistan and Burma; mortared, shot at and robbed in Afghanistan; beaten up and nearly drowned in India; and almost killed in an ultralight crash in Bosnia. Even through all of that, when you look at McCurry’s portraits you can see the stories they are trying to tell, whether it’s the life the subjects have lived, an experience they have had, or a struggle they have gone through. McCurry is driven by an inherent curiosity about the world and everyone in it and has an extraordinary ability to relate to people everywhere. This allows him to capture the stories of what it means to be a human no matter where you live. One of my favorite quotes of his is, “Just because someone’s wearing a turban, doesn’t mean it’s an interesting photo.”
He has been to Afghanistan 18 times since that first “covert operation” in 1979. He says, “One of the things that interests me is this amazing drama-in the beginning this invasion force, the Soviets, and people trying to keep their nation from being swallowed up. It was this noble cause against overwhelming odds. Why do I do it? Certainly the human drama is overwhelming. The stakes are so high. It’s like life, I imagine, in the Civil War or the Revolutionary War. There’s something about these monumental moments in a country’s existence when things we’re normally preoccupied with-career, family-become secondary to this larger freedom struggle or, in the case of Afghanistan, just survival. How people react and how the human spirit can either wither or be resilient is a very fascinating thing.”
I think what I love the most about McCurry’s portraits is that they are so alive. The colors are incredibly vibrant. You can feel the energy come through. The reds are deep and rich, the blues are so saturate, and the yellows bright and dynamic. This is not typical for photo-journalistic work. Most of the time, if they are not in black and white, the colors are somewhat dull and boring. I think this is because the photographers want the scene to tell the story. They don’t want the colors to overtake the subject. In McCurry’s photos, however, the colors and subject work in perfect harmony together. In his goal to show the humanity of the scenes he shoots, using vibrant colors brings it all more to life.
He has shot almost a million frames using Kodak’s Kodachrome slide film, which is known for its rich saturation. This film was discontinued last year, and Kodak gave the very last roll to McCurry. He spent nine months planning out how to use this film and National Geographic followed him around shooting a soon-to-be-released documentary about the film. Even with his years of experience, McCurry felt the pressure of shooting this historical last roll. Though he used a digital camera to hep evaluate composition, perspective and light, the stress, he says, came from wondering whether he was pressing the shutter at the right moment. The moment Cartier-Bresson called “decisive”.
Steve McCurry has made a career out of capturing not only stunning moments, but also, as the case with the Afghan Girl, the dramatic stories behind the moments. The stories are there, in the faces, in the places, in the landscapes. We just need to look.
AFTERWORD
McCurry’s most iconic photograph, “Afghan Girl”, was taken in 1984 at a refugee camp in Pakistan. At the time the photograph was take, she was anonymous. No one knew who she was, where she had come from, or where she had gone until 2002 when National Geographic Explorer sent a team to try to find her. They went back to the still-standing refugee camp, showed the photo, and got some clues. Someone claimed to know who she was and that she now lived in the mountains. It took him three days to bring her back. McCurry knew the second he saw her that it was the same girl. She was older and more worn, but had the same haunting eyes. Her name is Sharbat Gula and she didn’t understand the affect her photograph has had on so many people. She just knows that her life is a struggle and that it always will be a struggle.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THVt1UYQr1I
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