“I think that a person’s eyes really tell the story of who each one is. They are very expressive and add to the story of a person’s life,” he assures this newspaper Steve McCurry (Philadelphia, 1950), photographer with 40 years of career behind their backs. “I want them to look directly so that contact with me becomes contact with those who see the photo.” Not in vain he is the author of the famous photograph of a 12-year-old Afghan refugee girl in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1984, whose piercing and anguished look of green color caught the world from the cover of ‘National Geographic’. “There is an ambiguity in the expression, which is intensely striking. Not a smile, not a frown, a mixture of curiosity and wariness in his eyes that people respond to.” It is the most iconic photo of the American and is not lacking in his first exhibition in Barcelona, ’Around the World in 80 images’, which can be seen until May 7 at the new FotoNostrum space, at Carrer de Diputació 48months before coincidentally repeating its presence in the Catalan capital with another different sample, in the autumn, at the Design Museum.
the human condition
The retrospective, made up of 80 large-format photos taken between 1981 and 2019, is curated by McCurry and the Argentine businessman and photographer Julio Hirsch-Hardy, director of FotoNostrum, who highlights the “bold and unique visual interpretation of the human condition” of the American, who which Phileas Fogg has traveled around the world capturing images from Afghanistan to Thailand, going through the Tibet, Brazil, Cuba and Cambodia, but also stepping on cities like New York, Pompeii or Barcelona, from which discover two unpublished images in the exhibition. The photos of him have in common, according to Hirsch-Hardy, “the humanity that he captures and places as the central focus.”
La Pedrera and the ‘castellers’
There is no, McCurry admits in an interview by ‘mail’, no hidden story for the viewer for those two photos of Barcelona. “Both were taken at an event or in a public space, so there isn’t really a backstory. I selected them because I felt that they were exclusive to Catalonia”. One is the base of a ‘castell’ preparing to erect a human tower, which for the photographer “symbolizes teamwork and cooperation”. In the second he captured the roof of La Pedrera, with an anecdotal human presence in the distance, with Gaudí’s famous stone ‘warriors’, photographed thousands of times by tourists. With it, he says, “he wanted to celebrate the work of Gaudí, one of the most iconic artists and architects.”
Risk situations
McCurry has covered the war in Afghanistan, the Gulf war with his objective, he coincided in New York on 9/11, taking to the streets under the Twin Towers, and he was in the soccer stadium when the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015. “Each situation presented a unique challenge and was dangerous in different ways.. I would never risk my life for a photo,” he says. I try to work within a safety margin.”
He acknowledges having found himself many times in “impossible to capture situations”. But “I don’t think in terms of missed opportunities. In life there always are.” But among those that did not miss some of those that FotoNostrum exposes, when it captured in India, in 1983, a group of women in the desert during a sand storm or, in 2007, a child running through narrow alleys at the moment when that their feet do not touch the ground. Or, in Madagascar in 2019, two children playing with large hoops under the baobab trees.
The Afghan girl today
Some photos, he says without specifying, have “happened emotional bill”. “The important thing is to try to move forward in a positive way and not live in the past,” he adds. Perhaps for this reason, he leaves unanswered the questions about whether he believes that without her photo, life would have been worse or better for that person. Afghan girl, Sharbat Gula, whom he returned to look for years later, in 2002. He found her, already married and with children, and he photographed her again. With the arrival of the Taliban to power after the withdrawal of the United States from the country last summer, she managed to take refuge in Italy.
Faced with the takeover of the Taliban, he affirms that he will return to Afghanistan “when the time is right”
McCurry has returned countless times to Afghanistan since at the end of the 80s and, living with mujahideen, he covered the Russian invasion achieving a photographic report that earned him the Robert Capa Gold Medal. Now, with the Taliban in government, he laments that “life is extremely difficult for Afghans, but especially for women” and is “heartbroken by the lack of opportunities for women and girls.” A good connoisseur of the area, he points out that his “main concern, at this time of year, is the harsh winter conditions and the scarcity of food.” About going back to document life under the Taliban regime with his camera, at 72 McCurry has no doubts. “I will return to Afghanistan when the time is right.”
The controversy of touch-ups
member of magnum and winner of numerous awards, including four World Press Photo, was involved in controversy when in 2016 it was discovered that he had retouched some of his photos to make them more perfect. He is usually sparing in words on the subject, he ignores the question about where he believes the limits are or how far one can intervene in an image if it does not distort the message of the photo. He considers himself, ditch, “a photographer”.
Avedon and Helmut Newton
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PhotoNostrum, with 1,000 square meters for exhibition divided into two spaces, was born, according to its director, with the aim of “exhibiting both great references and emerging photographers” and arrives complementing the offer of KBr and Foto Colectania. After McCurry’s, a storm of Helmut Newton and ‘Avedon behind the scenes’, a visual study of the style of work of Richard Avedon made by his collaborator Gideon Lewin. In addition to the exhibitions, the space will also function as a commercial gallery of photographic work. In reality, the center was installed in 2019 in Barcelona, but the pandemic has slowed down the exhibition program until now. He came hand in hand The Worldwide Photography Gala Awards, based in London, which annually organizes the Julia Margaret Cameron International Awards for Photographers and the Pollux Prize.