Photojournalist Steve McCurry: biography, activities, creativity and the Hermitage

2024 Author: Sierra Becker | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-26 03:46

Steve McCurry is an incredibly talented photographer. 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 McCurry presented his wonderful works to the Russian audience (exhibition - St. Petersburg, Palace Square).

The showcase of his work was produced by the Hermitage (Department of Contemporary Art) as part of an existing project called Hermitage 20/21, which was designed to study, collect, and exhibit all forms of art from 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 discussed below.

Steve McCurry and his work

"Afghan Mona Lisa" is not the only successful shot of the photographer. He has a huge number of them.

The American photojournalist has gained worldwide fame and recognition for his haunting classic reporting. For more than 20 years, Steve has been working for the American National Geographic magazine and for other equally well-known publications. This master of his craft has an amazing ability to be always in the right place at the right time.

Steve has previously covered international conflicts such as the Iran-Iraq war, 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 award in this field.

The most diverse, bewitching, heartbreaking and exciting photographs of the photographer make up the exposition of many exhibitions.

Photographer biography: youth

Steve McCurry was born in 1950 in Philadelphia. He became interested in photography seriously in his youth, while studying at the Faculty of Cinematography at the University of Pennsylvania. His photographs in those days were often published in student newspapers.

In 1974, after graduating from university, Steve began working for one of the local newspapers. For an active young man, life in his native city seemed boring, as he longed to bring at least some benefit to people. With this goal in 1978, the future celebrity went to India.

There he lived in the worst conditions of local hotels. He often had to risk his he alth and sometimes evenlife. However, the beautiful and successful pictures, in his opinion, compensated for all the hardships and ordeals experienced.

Hot spots

Already in 1979, Steve went to the hot spots of Afghanistan in order to make photo reports there. A rather difficult journey has brought good results. A photograph of an Afghan girl with incredibly piercing green eyes, taken in 1984 in a refugee camp, was subsequently included in the list of the 100 best photographs according to National Geographic. The famous cover with an incredibly serious adult look of a girl in 2005 entered the TOP ten best for 40 years.

In 2002, not without effort, Steve managed to find again that very grown-up girl named (as it turned out this time) Sharbat Gulu and repeat the pictures of a woman, a mother of three children, but with the same piercing green eyes.

Steve McCurry has received many awards not only in his homeland but also abroad. He earned the title of the best photojournalist of the year several times. As a war photographer, he was awarded the Robert Capa Medal.

A special place is occupied by McCurry's work, made in New York on September 11th. Just before the attack, he spent the entire month in Asia and returned to America just the day before. He filmed everything that happened on his camera, while hiding from certain representatives of the authorities. His photographs clearly show the scale of the terrible tragedy.

What the photographer says about his work

The most important thing forStiva - be very attentive to any person, be consistent and serious in your intentions. Only in this case the picture will be sincere.

The photographer loves to carefully observe people. It seems to him that it is the face of a person that can tell a lot.

American Steve McCurry in his series of works Where We Live ("Where we live") takes a touching journey through different homes around the world. First of all, he focuses his attention on poor and very modest houses and the families living in them. He shows through his works that, despite the adverse living conditions, each of the families or personalities is good-natured and touching.

According to the master, he does not seek glory where misfortune and grief reign. He just wants to capture this moment and convey to all people that there is such a life, a life of need and suffering. He believes that, in general, human existence is incredibly tragic, and during periods of hostilities there is a reassessment of all values. Success, well-being and career recede into the background. Family happiness and he alth become the main ones, and at the same time, the main thing is the desire to survive at all costs.

In interviews, McCurry usually says he doesn't feel like a celebrity at all. This is due to the fact that people do not know him, but mostly only 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 it wasmentioned above, the most memorable of them is a photograph of a girl from Afghanistan. This image, unique in its incredible poignancy, which does not leave any viewer indifferent, was recognized in the most recognizable way.

The main theme in the works presented at the exhibition is military conflicts, rare disappearing 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.

Exhibition “Steve McCurry. 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 a lot of amazing shots throughout his career. The Hermitage presented most of his best work. Through the faces of people who became involuntary witnesses of certain events and disasters, the artist tried to show their incredible suffering, cruelty and violence endured by them.

The focus is on the history of a person's life and his view and attitude to everything that happens. In such a peculiar way, the artist demonstrates the suffering, deprivation and emptiness of people who have become unwitting participants in various tragic events.

Gift to the Hermitage

The exhibition “Steve McCurry…” (Hermitage) has become a significant event for the whole of Russia. After its completion, all the works by the artist were donated to the museum (department of contemporary art), wherethey will become even more valuable material that reflects the real emotions, state and feelings of a person who witnessed the events of his time.

Conclusion

Steve McCurry has millions of various photographs in his piggy bank, a huge number of which can be classified as brilliant, and hundreds, of course, serve as decorations for many magnificent halls of world-famous art museums. Now Russia, where Steve McCurry (Hermitage) presented his works, has a wonderful collection received as a gift from this brilliant artist.

His works enable viewers to be transported to those inaccessible and original, fascinating and beautiful places that he visited. You can look at his pictures endlessly, forgetting about time and space that separates the viewer from that place. The author surprisingly manages with incredible skill to remove the distance and the border between people located on both sides of the picture.

Everyone, looking at McCurry's photos, listening to his interview, is once again convinced of his sincere respect for absolutely all the people with whom he had and has to communicate and come into contact in work and life.