I didn't go anywhere this summer. Other priorities. But I did switch off the computer for a few days.
On one of those days I went to see ICONS, the Steve McCurry exhibition at Palau Martorell. I took my son. He's just hitting his teens — those of you who've been through it know exactly what I mean, and those who haven't, don't worry, life is getting you ready.
He didn't want to be there. Honestly, it was a bit of a drag. Two "conversations" in the middle of the exhibition. I'd pretty much given up when we walked past a photo that changed everything: a Peruvian boy crying, with a gun to his head.
He stopped dead. Stopped complaining. Started looking at the rest differently.
On the way out I asked him which ones he'd liked best. He said the landscapes.
The landscapes?! You read that right. From a photographer nobody remembers for his landscapes.
Afghan border, 1979
McCurry crosses on foot, dressed in local clothes, no passport, just before the Soviet invasion closes the country to the Western press. Weeks with the resistance. On his way back into Pakistan, he carries his rolls of film sewn into his clothes and his turban.
Those images travelled the world. They were among the first the West saw of that war.
What he did before to get there
What almost nobody knows is what he'd done a few years earlier to get there.
McCurry didn't study photography. He studied film. And when he graduated he couldn't find work in film, so he ended up at a local Pennsylvania newspaper: two years covering high school graduations and neighbourhood association meetings. Steady job. Nothing to do with what he wanted.
He saved up, quit, and bought a one-way ticket to India. Two suitcases: one with clothes, the other with 250 rolls of Kodachrome. He was going for a few weeks.
He stayed two years.
Somewhere along that trip he reached northern Pakistan. And from there, with no assignment and nobody asking him for it, he crossed the border.
Waiting until the camera disappears
But there's something else he picks up along the way, and it explains why his photos — war or not — carry the emotion they carry. He talks to people before he shoots. He connects with them. He waits until the camera stops being a strange object in the room. He shoots very few frames — only the ones that matter.
He's always explained it the same way:
"If you wait, people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view."
That's what happened with the Peruvian boy. The gun was a toy, by the way. It didn't need to be real to take you apart.
And it's what happened, twenty years earlier, with a green-eyed girl in a refugee camp in Pakistan — the National Geographic cover you've definitely seen, and probably never knew who took.
Giuseppe and the calendar
A couple of years ago I met Giuseppe at the photography studio rental in Barcelona. He represents Sudest57, the outfit that produces McCurry's exhibitions across half the world. I don't know how it happened, but we clicked.
One of those conversations that runs long because neither of you is in any hurry to end it.
As he was leaving, he pulled a 2013 Pirelli calendar out of his car — the one McCurry shot, with real women from Rio de Janeiro instead of models posing. He told me it wouldn't fit in his suitcase.
Not true, obviously. He just felt like giving it to me, and I was deeply grateful.
The calendar is now part of the little photography library I keep at the studio 🙂
If you're in Barcelona before 6 September, go and see ICONS. You don't need to know anything about McCurry before you walk in. You just need to be willing to wait a little in front of each photo.
And if you agree with my son — that the landscapes are the best part — you can tell me that too. Even if it's just to prove me wrong 😉
Un abrazo,
Marc
who also writes l'Atelier d'Idées by openbcn studios
