Steve McCurry

This striking new publication, a sequel to Phaidon's 2000 publication "South Southeast", is a selection of Steve McCurry's most astounding and powerful portraits from South and Southeast Asia. McCurry takes photographs all over the world, for "National Geographic" magazine and his own projects, but it is the people, places, colours and forms of Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma) that have inspired his most sublime images - photographs which transcend their original editorial purpose to become classics of photography. Like "South Southeast", this book features a remarkable range of photographs with brief captions and a short essay introduces the book.

Steve McCurry has covered many areas of international and civil conflict, including the Iran-Iraq war, Beirut, Cambodia, the Philippines and the Gulf war, but his continuing coverage of Afghanistan is perhaps his greatest achievement. It was with his first images of Afghanistan that McCurry established his reputation as a photojournalist. In 1979, disguised in native dress, McCurry crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan, shortly before Soviet troops invaded in support of t he failing Marxist government. When he emerged, he had rolls of film sewn into his clothes, images which would be published around the world as among the first to show the conflict there. His coverage won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photo graphic Reporting from Abroad, an award dedicated to photographers exhibiting exceptional courage and enterprise. Throughout his career McCurry has returned to Afghanistan time and time again - under different regimes and at times of civil unrest - t o document the people, the landscape and the heritage of this troubled, yet captivating, country. Each image is accompanied by a brief text providing geographical and historical background.

The title of this book is a phrase that Steve McCurry uses a lot when talking about his work – he is always trying to capture those 'unguarded moments' when people are at their most unselfconscious. McCurry takes photographs all over the world, for National Geographic magazine as well as his own projects, so this book includes the colours and forms of the Yemen, Mali, Niger, Chad, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), France and the former Yugoslavia, among others. The Unguarded Moment is the same size as Phaidon bestseller South Southeast but apart from the wider range of countries and continents covered, a key difference between the two titles is that all of the images in this titleare landscape format. In The Unguarded Moment, people go about their everyday business in extraordinary circumstances and settings, like the young women walking through a dust storm in India, the fishermen casting their nets in the Niger river in Mali's Sahel Desert and the boy working in a candy factory in Kabul, Afghanistan. This book includes striking portraits of a Tuareg woman in Mali, an intense young gypsy boy in Marseille and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma. There are children paying close attention to their teachers in school rooms in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, as well as five young monks happily playing with computer games at a monastery in India, just like any other boys their age would.

Tibet has suffered extreme political turmoil and upheaval over the last 50 odd years. Occupied in 1950, Red Guards destroyed thousands of official buildings and holy places during the Cultural Revolution, and religious freedom and traditional education are still severely under threat. Due to the strength of Tibetan faith in Buddha, in the Dalai Lama, and against the odds, many buildings have been reconstructed, their devotion and belief remain extraordinarily strong. Buddhism permeates every aspect of a Tibetan's life, whether living in Tibet or in exile in Nepal, India or the United States. A magnificent and time-stopping work, The Path to Buddha is divided into five parts, in which we see the monks in animated discussion, meditation and prayer; and we follow the devout believers on their arduous journeys to prayer. The two main chapters are interspersed with sections of portraits of this proud and dignified people whose own innate sense of their own being can be seen in the simplest of things, such as the way they dress and adorn themselves.

Steve McCurry is an American photojournalist best known for his photograph, "Afghan Girl" that originally appeared in "National Geographic" magazine. McCurry focuses on the human consequences of war, not only showing what war impresses on the landscape, but rather, on the human face. He is driven by an innate curiosity and sense of wonder about the world and everyone in it, and has an uncanny ability to cross boundaries of language and culture to capture stories of human experience. Most of my images are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person's face. I try to convey what it is like to be that person, a person caught in a broader landscape, that you could call the human condition.

American photographer Steve McCurry (b.1950) is universally recognized as one of today's finest image-makers and has won many of photography's top awards. This special limited-edition monograph brings together the most memorable and beautiful of his images, taken around the world over the last 30 years. McCurry's ability to cross boundaries of language and culture to capture fleeting moments of human experience is unique. With his discerning eye for form and colour, shape and symmetry, he offers us windows into other worlds. Seen at the large scale of this new book, McCurry's images are particularly powerful: reproduced at slightly larger than life size, his portraits have an extraordinary immediacy and impact, while even the smallest details of his spectacular landscapes are clearly visible on the page. Portraits of children, pilgrims and farmers are presented alongside views of ancient temples, busy city streets, dramatic mountain landscapes and quiet scenes of daily life - people are seen fishing, playing, working and praying. The images are presented in an uninterrupted sequence for maximum impact, and all the photographs are shown at either full-page size or as double-page spreads. The back of the book contains extended picture captions accompanied by colour thumbnail images for quick identification.

In 1985, Steve McCurry photographed an Afghan girl for the National Geographic. The intensity of the subject's eyes and her compelling gaze made this one of the most widely and consistently celebrated portraits in the history of contemporary photography. This image accompanies the other remarkable faces he has encountered whilst travelling throughout the world, collected together in an engaging and moving series of unique street portraits: unposed, unstylized images of people that reveal the true universality of the depths of human emotion. This fresh new edition, expanded to feature more photographs than before, including some never-before published, creates an up-to-date and unrivalled collection of McCurry's portraiture. Critically acclaimed and recognized internationally for his classic reportage, over the last thirty years he has worked on numerous assignments, travelling extensively throughout the Middle and Far East. A regular contributor to many international journals, McCurry is a member of Magnum Photos and a recipient of the Robert Capa Gold Medal and an unprecedented four World Press Photo first prizes in a single year; many of McCurry's images have since become modern icons. He is most famous for his evocative color photography, which has captured stories of human experience that, in the finest documentary tradition, transcend boundaries of language and culture.

Steve McCurry Untold: The Stories Behind the Photographs takes an unprecedented look at the work of Steve McCurry, one of today’s finest and most daring imagemakers. This is the first book to fully explore how the world-renowned photographer finds, takes and develops his uniquely iconic photographs. Presenting a personal archive of material, Steve McCurry Untold features the very best of McCurry’s most beautiful and powerful photo stories, taken from around the world over the last thirty years. Each story is illustrated with never-before-seen notes, images and ephemera – saved by McCurry from his extensive travels – and over 100 lavish, full-colour photo plates of McCurry’s most significant work. Brought to life by newly commissioned essays, the stories offer a critical narrative and give new insight and ideas into the background, experience and ideas behind McCurry’s unparalleled photography. Together, these fascinating documents reveal a new and exciting view of the story behind the story.

India explores the lives of everyday people in extraordinary settings through the lens of Steve McCurry, one of the most admired photographers working today. Steve McCurry: India explores the lives of everyday people in extraordinary settings through the lens of Steve McCurry, one of the most admired photographers working today. This new portfolio of emotive and beautiful photographs from India features 150 previously unpublished images taken across the Indian subcontinent, along with iconic photographs that are famous worldwide. Reproduced in a large format with captions, and an introductory essay, this book features a range of color pictures illustrating this most colorful of countries, capturing the lives of everyday people in extraordinary settings: from the Ganesh festival on Chowpatty beach in Mumbai to the Kolkata railway station before dawn to the flower markets of Kashmir and the streets of Old Delhi. Following Phaidon's 2013 bestseller Untold: The Stories Behind the Photographs, McCurry's India is a new selection of the photographer's beautiful and powerful images of India, a country he has photographed many times over the last thirty years. Other Phaidon titles by Steve McCurry, include Steve McCurry, The Iconic Photographs, Steve McCurry, Unguarded Moment and Steve McCurry: South Southeast.

Publikace nabízí výběr 57 nejslavnějších prací jednoho z nejznámějších fotografů současné doby, Steva McCurryho. Proslavil se především jako dokumentární fotograf, když jako první zachytil a ukázal světu život obyčejných lidí v Afghánistánu těsně před sovětskou vojenskou invazí, kam pronikl v převleku přes pákistánsko-afghánskou hranici. V uprchlickém táboře v Pákistánu vyfotil snímek, který později obletěl celý svět - byl to portrét "Afghánská dívka”, často nazývaný Mona Lisa Východu. Steve McCurry se zaměřuje především na fotografování válkou zmítaných států a snaží se tak otevřít oči lidem, kteří mají to štěstí žít v blahobytu dnešní doby. Na svých fotografiích nezachycuje pouze válečnou scenérii, ale především osoby, jejichž výrazy často nabízejí pohled hluboko do jejich duší. Steve McCurry získal za celou svou kariéru mnoho ocenění, mimo jiné v roce 1984 Magazine Photographer of the Year a ve stejném roce se mu podařilo stát se čtyřnásobným vítězem v soutěži World Press Photo. Získal také řadu humanitárních ocenění. Jeho díla patří ke sbírce nejprestižnějších fotografií moderního umění.

A celebration of the timeless act of reading - as seen through the lens of one of the world's most beloved photographers Young or old, rich or poor, engaged in the sacred or the secular, people everywhere read. This homage to the beauty and seductiveness of reading brings together a collection of photographs taken by Steve McCurry over his nearly four decades of travel and is introduced by award-winning writer, Paul Theroux. McCurry's mesmerizing images of the universal human act of reading are an acknowledgement of - and a tribute to - the overwhelming power of the written word.

War and Grace Magnum photographer Steve McCurry's Afghanistan retrospective Afghanistan has long been a country overwhelmed by tribal rivalries, colonial wars, and geo-political conflict. The Afghans have called their mountains "the land of rebellion," a land that has not been successfully occupied since the times of Alexander the Great. These invaders -- Persians, Arabs, Moguls, Sikhs, British, Russians -- may have been thwarted, but wandering through the bazaars of Kabul will attest to their legacy. In the people of Afghanistan, the genes of countless races meet and intermingle. Deep are the fissures in Afghan society; the schism between Sunni and Shia, the endemic violence across clans and tribes, and the blood feuds and rivalries within lineages. Yet born of such chaos and entrenched conflict are these most breathtaking of images. In this definitive retrospective of his work in Afghanistan, Steve McCurry has curated over 140 gripping images to present a torn, proud people, from the desert of Kandahar to the streets of Kabul and remote rivers of Nuristan. For almost four decades, McCurry traveled to the country regularly, documenting its people with a rare and disarming humanity. His most striking portrait Afghan Girl (1984) has graced the covers of magazines around the world, in equal parts haunting and evoking remarkable grace and dignity. In common with so much of McCurry's work, it has a timeless, painterly quality--entirely at odds with the troubled region in which it was taken. McCurry has always been subjected to dangers that are an inevitable part of life "on the road" for photographers. He often ventured behind the lines, usually at great risk. His first trip to Afghanistan in 1979 involved him dressing in Afghan garb in order to be smuggled across the border from Pakistan. That journey into the treacherous, unpredictable landscape -- territory controlled at various times by the Mujahideen, the Russians, and the Taliban -- was one that McCurry would make numerous times. Many other photographers would follow in his footsteps, but none would return with such a flawless body of work. "They are a proud people, eyes leveled straight, in contempt as much as in curiosity: these are the faces, both male and female, that peer so defiantly from Steve's magnificent photographs." -- William Dalrymple Text in English, French, and German

A selection of the very best of Steve McCurry's beautiful and powerful portraits from South and Southeast Asia.

The biggest and most comprehensive volume on Steve McCurry published to date and the final word on forty years of McCurry's incredible work. Written and compiled by Bonnie McCurry, Steve's sister and President of the McCurry Foundation, Steve McCurry: A Life in Pictures is the ultimate book of McCurry's images and his approach to photography. The book brings together all of McCurry's key adventures and influences, from his very first journalistic images taken in the aftermath of the 1977 Johnstown floods, to his breakthrough journey into Afghanistan hidden among the mujahideen, his many travels across India and Pakistan, his coverage of the destruction of the 1991 Gulf War and the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, up to his most-recent work. Totalling over 350 images, the selection of photographs includes his best-known shots as well as over 100 previously unpublished images. Also included are personal notes, telegrams and visual ephemera from his travels and assignments, all accompanied by Bonnie McCurry's authoritative text - drawn from her unique relationship with Steve - as well as reflections from many of Steve's friends and colleagues.

The bestselling behind-the-scenes look at the career of the legendary photographer - now in a new, compact format Now in paperback and re-sized for easy reading, Steve McCurry Untold is the only book to tell the fascinating stories behind McCurry's most iconic photographs. It explores the travels, methods, and magic that gave birth to his evocative images, delving deep into the true stories behind McCurry's most important assignments for National Geographic and beyond - including his reunion with the now-legendary 'Afghan Girl'. Each story includes McCurry's first-hand account alongside specially commissioned essays, ephemera, and personal photographs from his private archive. Featuring beautiful reproductions of McCurry's photographs spanning a broad range of themes and subjects and ephemera such as snapshots, journal extracts, maps, and newspaper clippings, Steve McCurry Untold is a living biography of one of the most imaginative documentary photographers working today. More than 50,000 copies of the hardback edition sold worldwide, it was translated into seven languages and became an international bestseller.