Steve McCurry is an incredibly talented master of photography. He became known around the world thanks to a photograph of an Afghan girl with amazing green eyes, which the artist captured with the lens of his camera in a refugee camp in Pakistan during the Afghan war.
Exhibition in Russia
From September to November 2015, the famous photographer Steve McCarry presented his remarkable works to the Russian audience (exhibition - St. Petersburg, Palace Square).
A demonstration of his work was prepared by the Hermitage (department of contemporary art) as part of an existing project called the Hermitage 20/21, which was designed to study, collect, and exhibit all types of art of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Simplicity and at the same time expressiveness are characteristic of the works of this amazingly talented artist.
More details about this exhibition will be described below.
Steve McCurry and his work
“Afghan Mona Lisa” is not the only successful photograph of the photographer. He has a great many of them.
The American photojournalist has gained worldwide fame and recognition thanks to memorable classic reporting. For more than 20 years, Steve has been working for the American magazine National Geographic and for other equally well-known publications. This master of his craft has an amazing ability to always be in the right place and at the right time.
Previously, Steve covered such international conflicts as the Iran-Iraq war, conflicts in the Philippines, Lebanon, Cambodia and the Persian Gulf. Photojournalist Steve McCurry is the best foreign photojournalist and has been awarded the annual Robert Capa Gold Medal in this area.
The most diverse, bewitching, heartbreaking and breathtaking photographs of the photographer make up the expositions of many exhibitions.
Photographer biography: youth
Steve McCurry was born in 1950 in Philadelphia. He was seriously interested in photography in his youth, while studying at the Department of Cinematography at the University of Pennsylvania. His photographs in those days were often published in student newspapers.
In 1974, after graduation, Steve began working in one of the local newspapers. To an active young man, life in his hometown seemed boring, as he longed to bring at least some benefit to people. For this purpose, in 1978, the future celebrity went to India.
There he lived in the worst conditions of local hotels. He often had to risk his health and sometimes even his life. However, beautiful and successful pictures, in his opinion, compensated for all the hardships and tribulations experienced.
Hot Spots
Already in 1979, Steve went to the hot spots of Afghanistan to make photo reports there. Quite a difficult trip brought good results. A photograph of an Afghan girl with incredibly piercing green eyes, taken by him in a refugee camp in 1984, was subsequently included in the list of 100 best photographs according to National Geographic. The famous cover with an incredibly serious adult look of the girl in 2005 entered the TOP ten best for 40 years.
In 2002, not without effort, Steve was able to again find the very matured girl named (as it turned out this time) Sharbat Gulu and repeat the pictures already of a woman, a mother of three children, but with the same invariable piercing green eyes.
Steve McCurry has received many awards not only in his homeland, but also abroad. He several times earned the title of best photojournalist of the year. As a war photographer, he was awarded the Robert Capa Medal .
A special place is occupied by the work of McCurry, made in New York on September 11. Before the attack, he spent the whole month in Asia and returned to America just the day before. He shot everything that was happening on his camera, while hiding from certain representatives of the authorities. The pictures of him clearly show the scale of the terrible tragedy.
What the photographer says about his work
The most important thing for Steve is to be very attentive to any person, to be consistent and serious in his intentions. Only in this case, the picture will be sincere.
The photographer loves to closely monitor people. It seems to him that it is the person’s face that can tell a lot.
American Steve McCurry in his series of works Where We Live ("Where We Live") demonstrates a touching journey through different houses around the world. First of all, he focuses on the poor and very modest houses and families living in them. He shows through his works that, despite adverse living conditions, each of the families or individuals is good-natured and touching.
According to the master, he does not seek glory where misery and sorrow reign. He just wants to capture this moment and convey to all people that there is such a life, a life in need and suffering. He believes that, in general, human existence is incredibly tragic, and during periods of hostilities, all values are reassessed. Success, prosperity and career are in the background. The main thing is family happiness and health, and the main thing is the desire to survive at all costs.
In an interview, McCurry usually says that he has absolutely no sense of being a celebrity. This is due to the fact that people do not know him, but mostly just pictures.
Steve McCurry in St. Petersburg
The exposition under the name of the famous American photojournalist was represented by more than 80 of his works. As mentioned above, the most memorable of them is a photo portrait of a girl from Afghanistan. This picture, unique in its incredible penetration, not leaving any spectator indifferent, was recognized in the most recognizable way.
The main theme in the works presented at the exhibition is military conflicts, rare endangered peoples, the modern world and ancient traditions. Each picture of him is a story of a person’s life, his view of everything that happens around him.
Exhibition “Steve McCurry. The moment of defenselessness ”showed the Russian audience the whole truth of life in the faces of simple, ordinary, sometimes defenseless people who are looking for justice and a way out of this situation.
Steve McCurry took many amazing pictures over the entire period of his professional career. The Hermitage presented most of his best works. Through the faces of people who became involuntary witnesses of various events and disasters, the artist tried to show their incredible suffering, cruelty and violence suffered by them.
The focus is on the story of a person’s life and his view and attitude on everything that happens. In this peculiar way, the artist demonstrates the suffering, deprivation and emptiness of people who have become involuntary participants in various tragic events.
A gift to the Hermitage
The exhibition "Steve McCurry ..." (Hermitage) has become a significant event for all of Russia. After its completion, all the works by the artist were donated to the museum (department of contemporary art), where they will become even more valuable material that reflects the real emotions, condition and feelings of the person who witnessed the events of his time.
Conclusion
Steve McCurry's piggy bank has millions of the most diverse photographs, a huge number of which can be attributed to brilliant, and hundreds, of course, serve as an adornment for many magnificent halls of world famous art museums. Now, Russia, in which Steve McCurry (Hermitage) presented his works, began to possess a remarkable collection received as a gift from this ingenious artist.
His works enable the audience to be transported to those inaccessible and distinctive, fascinating and beautiful places he visited. You can look at his pictures endlessly, forgetting about time and about the space that separates the viewer and that place. The author surprisingly manages to remove the distance and the border between people located on both sides of the picture with incredible skill.
Everyone, looking at the photographs of McCurry, listening to his interview, is once again convinced of his sincere respect for absolutely all the people with whom he has had and has to communicate and have contact in work and life.