STEVE MCCURRY
In Search of Elsewhere
The 1984 photograph of Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl caused a sensation after first appearing on a cover of National Geographic. The iconic image of the young, green-eyed refugee became a symbol of Afghanistan and was compared to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Mona Lisa. In a 2018 TEDx talk in Amsterdam, McCurry said it “changed my life” and “to have a picture that has resonated with so many people around the world, it’s a privilege to have made that picture.”
McCurry has traveled and lived around the globe revealing the diversity of human life. His recently released book Steve McCurry: In Search of Elsewhere (Laurence King) is a collection of 100 unseen photographs across a career spanning more than 40-years. In the book’s forward, Pico Iyer notes, “the glorious feast of photographs offered here gives us the heart of his work, which has to do with finding the human behind the headlines.
McCurry was born in Darby, Pennsylvania, and studied theater at Penn State University, where he worked as a staff photographer for his college newspaper. After graduation, he worked for two years at a local newspaper before freelancing in India. His career was launched when disguised in Afghan garb, McCurry crossed the Pakistani border into Afghanistan just before the Soviet invasion. He left the country with rolls of film sewn into his clothing. These images were published in The New York Times and Paris Match and won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad. He continued to cover conflicts in many war-torn countries, showing first-hand the destruction to the landscape and, more importantly, the horrific and distressing human toll.
The evocative color photographs in his book In Search of Elsewhere document and show human joys and struggles in India, Myanmar, Cuba, Togo, Ethiopia, Macedonia, and the monasteries of Tibet. In an interview with Forbes, McCurry explains, “I was able to go back through previous shoots and discover images that I glanced over before. It has been very gratifying to see the work from bygone eras and from places that are either inaccessible or that have been affected by climate change, war, innovation, and other disruptions. They provide primary source material on the way things were. Through the passage of time, images often take on a different meaning and importance. With the patina of time, you sometimes see things differently.”
