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PROTAGONIST / WITNESSES

THE EYES
OF THE WORLD
For Steve McCurry, photography is
an art that has the power to change the world.

He is doing that in Afghanistan with
a project that uses pictures to give voice to a group

of students from the Bamyan region

BY MATTIA SCHIEPPATI

T he man in this photo is a shaman, a man of after yet another shipwreck of a boatload of migrants. “It
magic. I don’t know whether this is true was the same with the war in Vietnam, with the Spanish Civil
or not; our western culture does not War (he is referring to the photo of the ‘falling soldier’ by
allow us understand fully. However, for Robert Capa, ed.), and with the Second World War... They are
the Rabari community in India where he lives, all examples of how a picture taken by a photographer in a

this man has supernatural powers, he can alter reality with particular situation took public opinion by storm and caused

just a glance.” Steve McCurry is speaking about the colourful events to take a different course. Because a photograph is

guru depicted in one of his most famous photographs, who something that continues to glow in the memory, it fixes a

is at the centre of a charity operation that associates the memory immediately and indelibly. It stays there like a mirror

celebrated photojournalist with the Jacob Cohën clothing in which you are forced to look at yourself and reflect. This

brand; but perhaps he is also speaking about himself. Or is a power that no other art has. Just consider the technique

rather, he is speaking about that power which nearest to photography, video: it is something

passes through the eyes of those like him } Photography is entirely different. Video is fleeting, it distracts
who, with a single picture, can change the the desire to explore you, it doesn’t last forever. But photography
lives of people, or even change the course does. And that is its magic.” Steve McCurry has

of history. This happened to McCurry with, the world in which performed more than his share of magic in his

for example, the famous photograph of the you live, and to share long career to date, capturing many indelible
Afghan Girl he took in a refugee camp in your point of portraits in the four corners of the world
Pakistan in 1984, which featured on the cover view with others (often in places blighted by armed or social
of National Geographic and which has since conflict) of vastly different subjects united by

become a symbol of the drama being played a common language, and by that unmistakable

out in silence in that part of the world. From a far-off reality, blend of full, saturated lights and colours that McCurry has

the strength, the gentleness and the humanity of the gaze of made his hallmark. A cut and a style that is also found, without

a child forced by events to be bigger than her age opened exception and without pandering to commercial motives, in

the eyes of the world. Something similar happened a few the four advertising campaigns that have recently led to the

weeks ago, with the equally tragic picture (snapped by an collaboration between the master photographer and Maison

anonymous volunteer in a humanitarian association) of the Jacob Cohën, “an emotion, an enormous stimulus, and huge

lifeless body of a Syrian child washed up onto a Turkish beach satisfaction,” defines Marco Tiburzi, marketing manager of

Left, portrait of an Indian guru from the Rabari community is one of McCurry’s most celebrated photos, taken in India in 2010 as part of
the “The last roll’ project”: 36 portraits taken by the master with the final roll of Kodak Kodachrome film. The jacket created
to support the Young Women’s Photography Initiative, the photographer’s project that give voice to the Afghan girls of the Bamyan region.

55N. 108 / PROTAGONIST