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Steve

McCurry
Untold
The Stories
Behind the
Photographs

Foreword 8
Shooting Under Fire 10
India By Rail 32
Monsoon 54
The Afghan Girl 70
After the Storm 92
Gateway to India 116
In the Vale of Sorrow, Kashmir 138
Sanctuary: The Temples of Angkor 154
Yemen: A Country Apart 172
September 11th 190
The Tibetans 214
Beyond the Footsteps of Buddha 232
Hazara: Strangers in the Homeland 256
Access to Life: Fighting HIV/AIDS 284
Chronology 302
Bibliography 310
Index 316
Previous page: Steve McCurry in monsoon oods, Porbander, India, 1983 / Above: Portrait photographer, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1992
Flying lowover Lake Bled, on assignment in
Slovenia in February 1989, the pilot took the plane
dangerously close to the waters surface. The
wheels caught and we went down, the propeller
shattering as we hit the water. The plane ipped,
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 swamunder the aircraft to
the surface. My camera and bag are still twenty
meters down.
Of course, Ive lost more than one camera
over thirty years as a photographer, but despite
countless close shaves and one or two disasters,
nothing has diminished my passion for photography
and travel sometimes in places of overriding
beauty, sometimes in places Id like to forget. And
nothing has dented my faith in the human spirit, or
in unexpected human kindness. Fromthe sherman
who dragged us fromthe freezing Lake Bled to the
stranger who hauled me to shore in Bombay when
I was attacked off Chowpatty Beach during the
Ganesh Chaturthi festival in 1993 (see p. 103), I have
had the good fortune to meet compassionate
and welcoming people throughout my travels; and
the kindest were often those who lived in the
harshest of conditions. Compelling photography
doesnt require exotic travel, but I needed to wander
and explore.
This was a lesson I learned early, it all
started in 1978, the year that I left my job as a staff
photographer at a newspaper in Philadelphia to
buy a couple of hundred rolls of lmand a one-
way plane ticket to India. Ayear later, in 1979,
I secretly crossed the border into Afghanistan
with the mujahideen, carrying little more than my
cameras and a Swiss Army knife. I emerged months
later with a reservoir of experiences that stands me
in good stead even today.
Each trip, each assignment, every place and
person Ive experienced and every photograph
Ive taken represents a step on the trail frommy
rst experiences to the present day. The camera
provides a record of a particular place and time,
and every photograph I make is meant to stand
on its own as a memorable image, but at the
same time each one forms part of a wider story.
This book presents some of the stories I have
observed,others that I have sought out, and still
others that leapt out at me when I least expected it.
I have made thousands of photographs
over the course of my career, most of which
have never been published, but alongside
this archive is another, equally extensive store
of non-photographic material. I have saved
countlessobjects and ephemera fromhand-
coloured studio portraits in Kabul and journals of
train rides across India, to press passes in Iraq and
landmine warnings fromCambodia. Alarge number
are presented here for the rst time.
This book is a record of these experiences,
but also the untold stories behind them. It is a
tribute to the places Ive been, the things Ive seen
and the people Ive known.
Steve McCurry
Foreword
7
Pilgrimat a Stupa, Amdo, Tibet, 2001
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In 1961, at the age of 11, a young Steve McCurry
sawa photo story on the Indian monsoon in
LIFE magazine, shot by the celebrated Magnum
photographer Brian Brake. He could not have
imagined then that he would one day inherit
Brakes mantle as master of the photo essay, or
that his own experience of the monsoon would
result in photographic publications that nowstand
as classics. McCurrys monsoon story would be
distinguished by a broader geographical scale, and
by his ambition to picture the inconsistency and
indifference of one of the planets most spectacular
weather phenomena. The dominant image of the
monsoon is that of overwhelming levels of rain,
but McCurry wanted to explore the event in all
its complexity, fromoods to dust storms, and to
picture the many ways in which those who depend
on it for survival cope with its welcome but often
destructive cycles.
Fromthe subcontinent east to Southeast
Asia, China, the Philippines andAustralia, the
monsoon (fromthe Arabic word mausi, meaning
season) brings torrential rain at some times
of the year and drought at others, the result
of differences in temperature between the
continental landmasses andthe oceans. From
his rst tripto India, in 197880, McCurry was
immediately aware of its potential as a subject
for a photo essay, but the sheer scale of the
topic meant that it didnt become a dened
project until the spring of 1983. McCurry often
works on projects concurrently, and he startedto
photograph for a monsoon essay while he was
travellingthrough Pakistan, India and Bangladesh,
working on his India By Rail story. Most of my
photographic projects involve places Ive already
travelled in, McCurry says. With the monsoon in
India, I had been living it for two or three years
while working on other stories. Because I had
already experiencedthe monsoon, I knewwhat the
dramatic elements were. It either rains too much
or not enough.
McCurry began his monsoon project with a
trip to Sri Lanka in May 1983. He had researched
the pattern of the monsoons likely arrival in
various regions in order to construct a rough
shooting schedule that left plenty of exibility;
for while the monsoons arrival and effects are
broadly known, neither can be predicted with
precision. As McCurry says, Theres no point
spending too much time coming up with pre-
conceived plans, because you easily end up
disappointed. I prefer to get to a place, immerse
myself and then go fromthere as things develop.
In Sri Lanka he gathered the latest information
about the projected arrival of the rains, then
travelled northwards through India fromJune to
September, tracking the weather as far as the
Himalayan mountains and the Kathmandu Valley
in Nepal. When I heard that the monsoon had
arrived in a particular region, Id jump on a plane
and get there. Whatever I might be doing when it
started to rain, Id drop everything and rush out to
take pictures. Areally heavy downpour only lasts
for several minutes, so when it starts to rain you
have to respond immediately.
These downpours offered both a practical
challenge and a marvellous opportunity to capture
something unique. In the rst instance, McCurry
was faced with keeping his cameras and lenses
dry not an easy proposition while wading through
chest-high oodwaters or ghting a sudden
deluge. I carried a large umbrella when I shot in the
rain. I would keep my back turned to the wind, and
half my time was spent keeping the camera lens
dry. Sometimes, in a downpour, that lens seemed
like the only dry object for fty miles. I was always
soaked, but the lens survived. I learned to balance
the umbrella on my shoulder, but almost invariably
an assistant would squeeze under as well, forcing
my camera out. Despite the difculties, McCurry
was able to capture stunning images, fromscenes
of a young girl in Bangladesh looking desperately
cold and dejected as she tries to shelter herself
against the downpour (see p. 62) and a dog waiting
anxiously for a door to be opened while the waters
rise around him(see p. 68), to lyrically beautiful
compositions such as that of monks at Angkor Wat,
49
Locals riding a rickshawthrough heavy monsoon rain, Varanasi, India, 1983
Dates & Locations
19834
Australia, Bangladesh, China,
India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka
Synopsis
Both a blessing and a curse,
destructive and sustaining, the
monsoon affects half the worlds
people. Infamous for torrential
rain-bearing winds that pore
across Asia fromtropical oceans,
the monsoon remains one of
lifes most reliable occurrences
and critical uncertainties. The
result of meticulous planning and
deep, personal inspiration, Steve
McCurry journeyed through three
continents to fully document
and endure the dramatic and
elemental gift of the gods as life
seemed to hang in precarious
balance.
Monsoon
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Two men crossing a swollen river after the bridge was washed away,
Goa, India, 1983
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Monsoon
their orange robes luminous in the mist (see p. 130).
Usually for me, weather is an ally, creating mood
and drama for photographs. But the monsoon was
a lesson in humility.
During one period of calmbefore the rains
came, McCurry documented the shermen of
Goa, who base their working lives on the cycle
of the dry and wet monsoons (the colder, dry
monsoon comes in the winter months, and the
warm, rainy version in the summer). He recalls,
I spent a fewweeks in the little shing village
of Sirgao, near the city of Panjim. The seas were
already getting rough, but the rain was nowhere
in sight. For several nights I slept in a shermans
house, waking at 4 a.m. to spend the day with him
and his friends in their carved dugout canoes. I
sat in the bottomof the boat with my camera bag
while one oarsman knelt in front of me, another
behind. Waves would wash over the sides, but
the shermen just laughed. They shed until it
was impossible to take their boats out. It was a
difcult life, and every year there were men who
didnt make it back.
An ability to become so absorbed in his work
that he is oblivious to a potentially treacherous
environment is something McCurry shares
with many of the worlds great documentary
photographers. One day, while photographing
froma bridge near Goa, the saturatedwooden
slats of the structure suddenly gave way beneath
him, and he tumbled on to the rocks below. The
next thing he knew, he woke up in a hospital in
the town. He lay in a bed, concussed and semi-
conscious, observingthe wardthrough a drowsy
haze. It was a large roomwith overheadfans and
droning ies, and nuns that seemedto oat by.
I was on an intravenous drip. The patient on one
side of me was handcuffedto his bed, andthe
man on the other side was a recent amputee. I
couldnt move, and I was afraidto ask what had
happenedfor fear theyd say I would never walk
again. I nally recovered enough that I got up and
left, before I was discharged, andwent a friends
house to recuperate. About a week later I was
shooting again.
Back on his feet, McCurry took a series of
photographs that illustrate howthe monsoon could
bring a degree of risk even to the most mundane
daily tasks. He was still in Goa, shooting a waterfall
that was usually a trickle but which the rains had
turned into a torrent. One of the images shows
two men crossing the river, presumably a regular
journey but nowperilous (see below). As they step
unsteadily across some large stones, one of the
men pulls the other, who is in danger of being blown
away as he desperately holds on to his umbrella.
Behind themthe swollen waterfall crashes down
into the river. The scene is a demonstration of the
vulnerability of humanity in the face of the power
unleashed by nature, and it reveals also McCurrys
tenacity in the face of potential danger, particularly
50
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Chaiwalla in monsoon oods, Porbandar, India, 1983
following his earlier fall or perhaps an optimistic
sense of security that comes fromencountering
the world through the rectangular frame of a
viewnder.
Some months into the project, McCurry
travelled to the northern Indian city of Varanasi,
where he was struck by the apparent normality with
which people continued to live their lives during
the monsoon, even though many of their homes
and businesses were under water; similar thoughts
would occur to himin Delhi, as he photographed
vendors selling food fromstreet carts with casual
nonchalance, despite being utterly drenched (see
p. 64). Thats when I realized that I wasnt covering
a natural disaster, but a regular, annual event. Even
so, some scenes were disturbing. At the burning
ghats of Varanasi, where Hindus cremate their
dead beside the Ganges so that the ashes can
be washed away by the river, there was nowhere
to burn the bodies because of the oods. Poorer
people would simply throwcadavers into the river
sometimes within a fewfeet of where people were
washing.
Rising oodwaters incubate and spread a
range of pernicious diseases, and McCurry has
been fortunate never to catch any of the maladies
common to the rainy season: cholera, malaria and
typhoid, among others. Venturing out into the turgid
waters always carried a degree of risk, however,
and it was rarely pleasant. He photographed where
possible frombuildings or a small boat, but often,
as at the small village of Porbandar in Gujarat, he
was forced to enter the water (see p. 2). I took a
roomon the second oor of a hotel that was empty
save for the night watchman. The ground oor was
ooded, with water knee-deep until you started
climbing the stairs. For four days I waded out into
the submerged village to photograph, wearing a
pair of tennis shoes (see right). Alocal assistant
carried my camera bag. I worked for eight hours a
day in chest-deep, slimy water that was probably
infested with cholera, where dead animals oated
among the garbage and sewage. Another concern
was leeches. I had themcrawling up my trousers
and on my back, between my toes, even in my hair.
I used salt to get themoff, or Id burn themloose.
They would swell up like balloons with blood.
Undeterred, he would be out again the next day.
McCurrys travels took himfromplaces
overwhelmed by sudden downpours to other
regions desperate for rain. In the dry areas there
was often a palpable tension in the air, like straw
in the throat, and in one such place, the Thar
Desert of Rajasthan, McCurry captured one of
his most striking images. I was in a beat-up taxi
travelling through the desert to Jaisalmer, near the
IndiaPakistan border. It was almost as hot as the
planet ever gets. The rains had failed in that part of
Rajasthan for the past thirteen years, and I wanted
to capture something of the mood of anticipation
before the monsoon hit. As we drove down the
road, I could see a dust stormgrowing it typically
happens just before the monsoon breaks. For miles
around it built into a huge wall of dust, moving like a
tidal wave, until eventually we were enveloped in a
thick fog. The temperature dropped suddenly as it
arrived, and the noise was deafening. We stopped
the car. Some women and children were working on
road maintenance, something theyre driven to do
when the crops fail, and they clustered together to
Monsoon 52
54 55
River, swollen by the Monsoon rains, snaking through ArnhemLand, Northern Territory,
Australia, 1984
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this green soup, seemingly disembodied. In what
looks at rst like an everyday snapshot, a girl leans
against a white picket fence (see p. 58). It takes a
moment to realize that her house is submerged,
and the green carpet perpendicular to her chest
hides three feet of water. Characteristically, faced
with a scene of someone undergoing hardship,
however regularly it may occur, McCurry focuses on
the humanity of the person he pictures, capturing
beauty in the most unlikely situations.
McCurrys exploration of the Asian monsoon
was initially published in National Geographic in
December 1984 and then expanded in a book
entitled Monsoon, published in 1995. These
projects were the synthesis of some 12 months
of work over several years, work that gave the
photographer an appreciation of both the fragility
of life and the determination of people to carry on
under the most adverse conditions. The rains are
longed for on the one hand, but theyre a disaster on
the other, and one that most people cant escape.
They can only watch as the oodwaters seep into
their living rooms. Theres a sense of fatalismin
such places. The wheel turns and people go on.
During his experience of the monsoon, McCurry
realized that he was dealing with the fundamentals
of life. These people live on intimate terms with the
weather. They work through rainstorms oblivious
to the discomfort, and millions of families live in
shacks where water drips fromthe ceilings. When
theres drought, they wait; when theres ood, they
cope. He captures those critical moments when an
individual, faced with the insurmountable, resolves
to carry on, but his images never tip over into
sentimentality. Instead, what we see through his
eyes are scenes of strength, humour and resilience.
McCurry has said that this project required
a concentration that bordered on masochism, a
total immersion in the monsoon and in the day-
to-day experience of millions of people. I spent
day after day in grit-lled heat not meant for even
mad dogs or Englishmen, wallowing in lthy
water up to my chest, or standing in the street
in a torrential downpour, with an incredulous
assistant desperately wishing he were somewhere
else. In those moments I began to learn the art
of patience, and I began to empathize with the
people whose lives are ruled by the weather. I was
changed by my time covering the monsoon. Half
the worlds population is affected by the whimof
these winds. This is the reality, and it will stay with
me forever.
Evening light catching rain-soaked paddy elds, near the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, 1983
Girls seeking shelter beneath a rice basket, Java, Indonesia, 1983
shield themselves fromthe sand and dust, singing
and praying and barely able to stand.
The resulting picture (see p. 57) is one of
McCurrys most memorable photographs. It
illustrates his belief in being perpetually present,
always aware of where you are, rather than thinking
of where you are heading. You cant get hung up
on what you think your real destination is. The
journey is just as important. You have to be open
to what you see along the way, and ready to seize
an opportunity stop and make the picture. Such
an approach marries well with the erratic nature of
the monsoon, although the need to stop repeatedly
can be difcult. It can be hard, especially when
youve already stopped many times, or its raining,
or too cold or too hot, or if youre in the middle of a
conversation. In some ways, its easier when youre
working alone, or with only an assistant. Then we
always work to get the right picture, and that may
mean stopping fty times.
By September of 1983 McCurry was heading
high into the Himalayas, where the vast mountain
ranges would offer another way of picturing the
monsoon. He ewto Kathmandu in Nepal, then
travelled into the mountains, his bus narrowly
avoiding a landslide that had washed away much
of the road. Above the Kathmandu Valley, he was
greeted by long views of the suns rays bursting
through saturated clouds, as the annual cycle of the
monsoon rains reached its nal weeks (see below
left).
As the summer rains died away on the
subcontinent, McCurry made plans to travel to
China, Australia and Indonesia fromDecember
to March, seeking out the farthest reaches of the
Asian monsoon system. In Australia, he wanted
to see howthe monsoon affected the aboriginal
peoples who inhabit the rainforests of the Northern
Territory around Darwin. He travelled with the
Aborigines as they hunted, and photographed them
crafting light canoes fromeucalyptus bark living
with their environment rather than ghting against
it. In Indonesia, he spent a week in the mountains
of Java, where the massive Galunggung volcano
had erupted just a fewmonths before and was
continuing to spewash into the atmosphere. From
there he moved on to the city of Surabaya, travelling
around by boat to witness howquickly nature
began to take hold once the ood waters rushed in.
In a place called Bojonegoro, a neighbourhood had
been ooded for fteen days, and a beautiful carpet
of green pond plants had grown over the surface
of the water. The village looked as if its houses had
been sunk into putting greens. It was a surreal
sight, with people casually strolling waist-deep in
Monsoon

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