Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry (born in 1950 with Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania, the United States) is a American Photographe. He lives with New York, with Manhattan, in full university district, with two steps of Washington Square.

Member of the Agency Magnum since 1986, it traverses the world in the search of what it calls “the unexpected one, moment of the controlled chance, which makes it possible to discover by accident of the interesting things that one did not seek”. He is very known for his photography very evocative color, in the tradition of the documentary report.

Biography

Steve McCurry dreamed, being young, to become a documentary scenario writer. It made studies with the College of Arts and Architecture of the Université of Pennsylvania, where it obtained a diploma with congratulations . At 19 years, it spends one year to travel in Europe, a little everywhere, working like waiter in a restaurant with Amsterdam, then with Stockholm. It then left to discovered South America, then of the Africa. “I believe that I always wanted to see the world, to explore new cultures”, says it in an interview published on Internet at the time of the exit of its book “ Southern South-east ”, which gathers its images of the South Asia and South-east.

McCurry thus sought a profession enabling him to concretize this desire. It began its career by working two years as photographer in a newspaper, which it left to leave in India, in 1978, as photojournalist freelance. It is there, which he learned how to observe the life and to wait. It realized that when it is awaited, “people forget the apparatus and their heart penetrates in the image”.

Its career was launched when - disguised with an indigenous behavior - it crosses the border between the Pakistan and the Afghanistan to penetrate in the zones controlled by the Moudjahiddin S (“combatants of Islam”), right before the Soviet invasion . When it arose - it had made sew the film rollers inside its clothing - its images were published in the whole world and were among the first which showed the conflict which had just begun. Its report obtained the Prix Robert Capa Gold Medal for the best illustrated report abroad, a reward devoting the photographers having shown of a courage and an exceptional spirit of initiative.

McCurry covered many zones of international or civil conflicts, among which the Guerre Iran-Iraq, the Lebanese civil war, the Kampuchea, Filipino , the Guerre of the Gulf, the bursting of the Ex-Yugoslavia and the Afghanistan. It especially was interested in the human consequences of the war.

New York, September 11th, 2001

The September 11th 2001, Steve McCurry was in its office with New York, in a building close to Washington Square, when the planes struck the turns of the World Trade Center. It came just, the night before, to return of the Tibet, and was opening its mail. Is invited it to say to him to look by the window. When he saw smoke and the flames, he seizes his camera and climbed while running to the roof of his building, from where he had a sight released on all the downtown area. Between the moment when it started to photograph since its roof and the collapse of the first tower, it ran out only forty minutes. It then precipitated on the spot with its assistant, and after having crossed the stoppings of police force, could photograph the indescribable chaos which it had under the eyes, until fallen the night. There it is gone back there the next morning, very early, benefitting from the darkness to penetrate in the closed area, and remained to take photographs as a long time as it was not driven back a sector. In its Newspaper , it notes: “sadness was indescribable. I had seen these buildings each day of my window. They, for me, were framed with the vault of Washington Square”, and still: “I tried to translate on the film what I felt, horror and the loss. It was completely another level of the evil”.

McCurry is guided by an innate curiosity and a direction of amazement about the world which surrounds it and of each person whom it meets. It has a strange faculty to cross the borders of the language and culture to seize stories relating to the human experiment.

The young Afghan refugee

Travelling throughout the world during the two last decades, Steve McCurry looked at right in the eyes the faces of people in all the corners of planet. From Afghanistan with Los Angeles, and in innumerable places between the two, it drew some from the photographic portraits most outstanding of our time. Its manner of photographing direct and without compromise enabled him to produce some memorable images much illustrated the cover and the interior pages of the National Geographic Magazine , among which, that, very famous, of an Afghan young person taken refuge in Pakistan. One particular moment in its life was the meeting, after almost two decades, with this Afghan young woman, Sharbat Gula, which it had photographed - teenager - a score of years before. The portrait which it made of it at the time, with this intense glance, unforgettable, had been reproduced as a cover for National Geographic Magazine . This image, has so much be published, in whole world that it is become icon, and that much regards it as the photography which is, nowadays, most recognizable in the world. “Its skin is marked; there are wrinkles now, but it is as seizing as it was it all these years ago”, has it says after their meeting.

Its most recent reports led Steve McCurry to Angkor Wat, with the Yemen, the Cachemire, in India, for the celebration of the fiftieth birthday of independence, in Burma, with the Sri Lanka and Bombay.

It received many prices, of which that of “ Photographe magazine of the year ”, given in 1984 by the National association of the American press photographers . It is this same year that it obtained - fact without precedent - the first four prices, at the time of the contest of the World Press Photo. It also gained twice the Prix Olivier Rebbot.

Quotations

“the majority of my images are founded on people, and I try to transmit that it seems that these people must be, of the people seized in a broader landscape, which one could call the human condition”.
“In an unconscious way, I believe, I watch for a glance, an expression, features or a nostalgia able to summarize or more exactly to reveal a life”.

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