“Flying low over Lake Bled, on assignment in Slovenia in February 1989, the pilot took the plane dangerously close to the water’s surface. The wheels caught and we went down, the propeller shattering as we hit the water. The plane flipped, and the fuselage began to sink in the icy lake. My seat belt was stuck, but an instinct for self-preservation kicked in and I was able to wrestle free. The pilot and I swam under the aircraft to the surface. My camera and bag are still 65 feet down.”
So begins Magnum photographer Steve McCurry’s latest book, Steve McCurry Untold: The Stories Behind the Photographs (Phaidon). The book spans 30 years of McCurry’s career and includes fascinating ephemera from his travels: diary entries, photos of him at work and some of the 20-plus passports he’s gone through over the decades. McCurry survived the Slovenia plane crash, as well as armed robbers and bombings in Afghanistan, but what comes through in his images is wonder, rather than suffering. He manages to make the world seem enormous and quite small; exotic, and somehow familiar.
Growing up in suburban Philadelphia, McCurry was a wild child who preferred playing in the woods to studying. His first encounter with photography, at age 11, was through a LIFE magazine photo essay by Brian Brake on India’s monsoons.
Steve McCurry photographing in Nepal, 1983Steve McCurry—Magnum Photos
“It just transported me to another world,” he told TIME. Inspired by photographers like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, he knew he’d found his calling.
“My first good photograph was in Mexico City,” McCurry once told CNN. “There was a [homeless] man sleeping in front of a furniture store … below this brand-new sofa in the window. The juxtaposition was, I thought, a perfect kind of image. That’s what set me on my way to being a professional photographer.”
After graduating college, McCurry spent a few years at the Today’s Post in King of Prussia, Penn., shooting high school graduations and Kiwanis meetings, honing his skills — but he knew it wasn’t for him. He left for India in 1978, intending to stay for three months. He stayed for two years.
“India was like another planet to me,” he told CNN. “I’ve been back 80 or 90 times … and there’s still many places I haven’t seen.”
A year into his time abroad, he met Afghan refugees who told him about the brewing mujahedeen resistance to the violent pro-Russian government. He agreed to document their plight; they disguised him in traditional dress and brought him into the country illegally.
“My possessions included a plastic cup, a Swiss Army knife, two camera bodies, four lenses, a bag of film and a few packets of airline peanuts,” he recalls. The conflict — and McCurry’s professional profile — escalated dramatically when the Soviets launched a full-scale invasion. Their jets were flying “so low and close they would fill my lens,” McCurry writes. “We just prayed they wouldn’t see us and start strafing.”
As dramatic as his adventures have been, McCurry has always focused on the human cost of war, rather than conflict itself. It’s important, he says, to maintain a rigorous detachment in the face of suffering in order to do the job—and it also probably helps that he isn’t married and doesn’t have kids.
McCurry’s detachment, however, is hardly a form of callousness.
“People, wherever they are in the world, want to be respected and loved. If you respect people, doors open,” McCurry told Al Jazeera. Another key lesson is patience. He researches a place before picking up the camera, visiting five to ten villages in a given country before focusing on the most interesting one. He also rarely works alone. “I can’t stress how important it is to work with a trusted assistant or guide. That person really has your life in his hands, and he can make or break your story.”
Not all of McCurry’s work carries him into war zones. Pirelli, the Italian tire company, commissioned McCurry to shoot its 2013 calendar in Rio. Most fashion photographers shoot nude female models for these corporate calendars. McCurry’s models not only wore clothes, but he selected women associated with humanitarian causes. Commissions like this, he says, allow him to make strong work without compromising his vision.
“There’s a meditative aspect to it,” McCurry told Art Space. “When I’m walking around photographing, I get into a particular mindset where I become much more attuned to the world around me. It’s a joy to be alive, and maybe that’s what come through.”
Steve McCurry has been a photojournalist for over 30 years. He is the recipient of the Robert Capa Gold Medal, the National Press Photographers Award and four first prize awards in the World Press Photo contest. Steve McCurry Untold: The Stories Behind the Photographs will be published by Phaidon in September 2013.
Myles Little is an associate photo editor at TIME.
Women gathering clover in Wadi Hadhramaut, near Shibam, Yemen, 1999
‘When I first arrived in Shibam, I was astonished – it is extraordinary. It perfectly illustrates what a unique place Yemen is in terms of architecture, environment and landscape.’ The sixteenth century buildings ‘look like mud skyscrapers rising out of the flat desert plain. The city is surrounded by mountain escarpments on the far horizons – it’s one of the most unusual, interesting landscapes in the world.’ Steve McCurry—MagnumBoys in the boot of a taxi, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1992
Concerned about the plight of the Hazara people of Afghanistan, McCurry helped establish a non-profit called ImagineAsia. ‘It’s an attempt to get warm clothes, textbooks, pencils and notebooks to the Bamiyan region of Afghanistan, where the Hazara people live. Maybe most significantly, we’ve helped to set up classes for children and their mothers in Kabul. In addition, ImagineAsia has sponsored a young Hazara woman who is studying for a university degree in the United States.’Steve McCurry—MagnumTrain station platform, Old Delhi, India, 1983
‘The station is a theatre, and everything imaginable happens on its stage. There is nothing the trains haven’t observed.’Steve McCurry—MagnumMen praying in the Hazratbal mosque, Srinagar, Kashmir, 1998
‘I can’t stress how important it is to work with a trusted assistant or guide. That person really has your life in his hands, and he can make or break your story.’ For his project in Kashmir, McCurry worked with friend and journalist Surinder Singh Oberoi, who went by the nickname Lovely. ‘Lovely is a big, burly Sikh and the main person who helped me on the story. I sat with him virtually every night going over different ideas and story possibilities, making notes and lists of potential locations and subjects to photograph.’Steve McCurry—MagnumMother and child sleeping on their houseboat on Tonle Sap Lake, near Angkor, Cambodia, 1998
'Part of it is just being patient and waiting until people decide to look
somewhere else or get bored with you. It might be 80 percent of your
time isn't productive, but if you get a couple of times in the course of
the day where you can get what you need, that's good enough.'Steve McCurry—MagnumWorkers turning ropes of sugar paste into hard candy, Kabul, Afghanistan, 2007
‘I wanted to do the story because the Hazaras were clearly a people suffering persecution they did not deserve. They are considered heretics by the Sunni majority, and their social standing is similar to that of the Dalit or ‘untouchable’ caste in India. Now, with growing Taliban influence despite a decade of American and NATO intervention, the Hazaras are probably going to suffer again.’Steve McCurry—MagnumMan reading the Qur’an, Sana’a, Yemen, 1997
‘With its biblical oriental flavor, its markets and its ancient walled cities, Yemen is exotic, but there’s much more to it.’Steve McCurry—MagnumWelder in a ship-breaking yard, Bombay, India, 1994
‘The ships are absolutely huge, and these people are like termites, slowly breaking them down. The vessels are reduced to scrap within three or four months, and then just gone.’Steve McCurry—MagnumMother and child looking in through a taxi window, Bombay, India, 1993
‘I was in a taxi waiting at a traffic light during the monsoon, and a woman brought her child up to the car window. I raised my camera, took two frames, the light changed, and off we went – it all happened in about seven or eight seconds. Two months later, I came across these two frames when I was editing the pictures in New York. I was delighted that the picture came out as well as it did. It seemed to symbolize the separation between my world and hers – I’m in this air conditioned bubble, she’s out there in the heat and the rain – and how those two worlds came together for a moment.’Steve McCurry—MagnumThree monks climbing to the Mingun pagoda, cracked during an earthquake in 1839, Mandalay, Burma, 1994
'There is something deeply appealing about Buddhist countries. I am endlessly intrigued by the way the monks live, by the way Buddhist philosophy emphasizes compassion, as well as by the iconography. The ethics and the aesthetics of Buddhism are melded in a unique way.’ Steve McCurry—MagnumAgra Fort Station, Agra, India, 1983
‘Each time a train rolled in, I would try to capture the incredible swirl of life there, all the time stepping over people camped out on the platforms, and working my way around mountains of luggage. India’s stations are a microcosm of the country. You see life being lived out right in front of you. Everything is on view – eating, sleeping, washing, caring for children, conducting business. Chai wallahs sell tea, cows and monkeys forage for food, people compete for tickets – the noise of the crowds is like an assault. Someone may be repairing shoes, another might be cutting hair or shaving someone. Many of the barbers who operate in stations have just a chair and a dish with a little water in it.’Steve McCurry—MagnumStruggling camels silhouetted against the oil-fire, al-Ahmadi oil field, Kuwait, 1991
‘The darkness caused by the burning oil wells was like a moonless night. The exposure on my camera was about a quarter of a second on f2.8.’ The photographs show a scorched, infernal place, ‘but they don’t convey the fine mist of oil that hung in the air and coated my cameras, or the deafening roar of the burning wells. Nor do they show the unexploded bombs and mines that dotted the desert. I’ll never forget the moment I got out of the car to stretch my legs and caught a glimpse of an allied lawn-dart mine behind the vehicle with our tire tracks running right over it!’Steve McCurry—MagnumMcCurry’s 35mm slides from Angkor, CambodiaSteve McCurry—MagnumPages from McCurry’s ‘Kashmir’ journalSteve McCurry—MagnumLetter from Elie Rogers, Illustrations Editor, National Geographic
Magazine, 17 December 1983Steve McCurry—MagnumCover and pages from McCurry’s ‘Monsoon’ journal, 1983Steve McCurry—MagnumCover and pages from McCurry’s ‘Monsoon’ journal, 1983Steve McCurry—MagnumCover and pages from McCurry’s ‘Monsoon’ journal, 1983Steve McCurry—MagnumPhoto page from McCurry’s Passport, 1996–2006 (l)
Cambodian Visa, 2003, from McCurry’s Passport (r)Steve McCurry—Magnum
