You can spend a lifetime trying to take a photo of youth your children, others and never capture the moment that was snapped by Steve McCurry. Every National Geographic subscriber, everyone interested in photography, and anyone who has ever seen the print, reproduced here, knows that face, is moved by those eyes. They attach to the human soul. And some know the story of a girl, about 12, whom the photographer found in a Pakistani refugee camp in 1984, where the orphan was housed during the former Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. It may be the most evocative portrait of the 20th century the eyes representing to photography what the Mona Lisa smile meant to a canvas. Because in those eyes a parent will find everything that is possible in an upside-turned world the haunt, the fear, the sense of futility, the will to live, the dread of tomorrow, a desire for tomorrow.
Most of us shutterbugs have never captured an image like this because, frankly, we would not want to. Despair is a very hard thing to photograph. I have done it once, in Haiti. It is a very hard thing to do. But two of my photos hang in our house. They must be viewed. So must the Afghan girl.
McCurry’s most famous photograph, on the cover of National Geographic in 1985, will be on display through Feb. 14 at the Gallery Old Town in San Diego. Many other photographs by the award-winning photographer also are on display.
Also at the exhibit is the amazing story of McCurry’s rediscovery of the girl 17 years later, of a woman 30 or younger whose sad face tells the story of a ripped-up country and a life so far removed from our Southern California journeys that it is hard to picture. And that’s why we are blessed with people like McCurry, who show us.
|
RSS Subscribe
