UK Exhibition Features Work of Steve McCurry

This summer, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery will be displaying over 80 images by world-renowned photojournalist Steve McCurry, in the first and only UK exhibition of his work. Recognized as one of the world’s finest photographers, Steve McCurry is a recipient of the Robert Capa Gold Medal and is best known for his iconic image, “Afghan Girl” (shown above).

The exhibition features photographs spanning McCurry’s extraordinary 20-year career, which began with his coverage of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, where he disguised himself as a native and sewed roles of film into his clothes to hide them as he crossed borders. McCurry’s goal was not to photograph the war, but to capture images of the human consequences of war— a recurring theme throughout his career.

"I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person's face," McCurry says. (http://bit.ly/d1FKQy)

“Afghan Girl,” a captivating portrait of a young girl in a Pakistan refugee camp in 1984, is the perfect example of the powerful effects of McCurry’s photography. After the portrait appeared on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985, the image received so much response that it became “the most recognized photograph” in the 114-year history of the magazine, as well as a symbol of the refugee situation worldwide.

Readers of the magazine were so moved by the suffering reflected in the girl’s eyes that National Geographic formed a team to search for the girl. When she was finally identified over 17 years later as Sharbat Gula, National Geographic published a follow-up cover story and set up the Afghan Children’s Fund in her recognition. The story was also the subject of a television documentary, copies of which will be available at the exhibition.

Though the viewer is instantly drawn in by the vivid, evocative colors in McCurry’s images, the most successful aspect of his photographs is his ability to capture the beauty in the activities of everyday life and establish a universality understood by people everywhere.

“The thing that I want people to take away from my work is this human connection between all of us,” McCurry says. “Despite our religion, language or ethnicity, we’re all basically the same.”

Steve McCurry’s retrospective exhibition will be on view until October 17, 2010. For more information, click here. For more history on “Afghan Girl,” please visit http://bit.ly/dykaR2.