166 / 232
198
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STEVE MCCURRY (1950- )
Afghan Girl.
Fujicolor Crystal Archive print, 19
1
/
2
x13 inches (49.5x33 cm.),
with McCurry’s signature, in ink, and the serial number 42497, in pencil,
on verso. 1984; printed 1990s
[12,000/18,000]
From the Howard Greenberg Gallery, NewYork, NewYork; to a Private
East Coast Collector, 1990s.
Contemporary American photographer Steve McCurry is widely respected
for his transcendent, beautiful images from around the world. He continues
to travel extensively.“The fields of photography and photojournalism have
been permanently shaped by McCurry’s vivid imagery and the universal
themes represented in his work,” writes Christopher Phillips, Curator at
the International Center of Photography.
In 1979, McCurry, disguised in traditional clothes, agreed to document
the civil war in Afghanistan, and crossed the border from Pakistan in May
1979—just a few months before the Soviet Union invaded. McCurry was
one of the first photographers to record the extreme brutality happening
in Afghanistan during this time.
This portrait of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan teenager living in the refugee
camp Nasir Bagh in Pakistan in 1984, appeared on the cover of
National
Geographic
in June 1985. It quickly became one of the most recognizable
portraits in the world, and brought McCurry a great deal of acclaim.
McCurry had neglected to write down the name of the young woman
he had photographed, and searched for her unsuccessfully throughout the
1990s. In 2002, a team of
National Geographic
journalists were able to
locate Gula in the remote mountainous region of Afghanistan calledTora
Bora, and were able to confirm her identity using the iris pattern of her
striking eyes.
In her 2002
National Geographic
piece about the reunion of McCurry and
Gula, Cathy Newman wrote of Sharbat Gula:“She remembers the moment.
The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger.The man
was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met
again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.”