Steve McCurryUntold 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 floods, Porbander, India, 1983 / Above: Portrait photographer, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1992

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 twenty meters down.

Of course, I’ve 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 I’d like to forget. And nothing has dented my faith in the human spirit, or in unexpected human kindness. From the fisherman who dragged us from the 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  doesn’t 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 film and a one-way plane ticket to India. A year 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 I’ve experienced and every photograph I’ve taken represents a step on the trail from my first 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 countless objects and ephemera – from hand-coloured studio portraits in Kabul and journals of train rides across India, to press passes in Iraq and landmine warnings from Cambodia. A large number are presented here for the first time.

This book is a record of these experiences, but also the untold stories behind them. It is a tribute to the places I’ve been, the things I’ve seen and the people I’ve known. 

Steve McCurry

Foreword

7Pilgrim at a Stupa, Amdo, Tibet, 2001

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In 1961, at the age of 11, a young Steve McCurry saw a 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 Brake’s mantle as master of the photo essay, or that his own experience of the monsoon would result in photographic publications that now stand as classics. McCurry’s monsoon story would be distinguished by a broader geographical scale, and by his ambition to picture the inconsistency and indifference of one of the planet’s 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, from floods 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.

From the subcontinent east to Southeast Asia, China, the Philippines and Australia, the monsoon (from the 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 and the oceans. From his first trip to India, in 1978–80, McCurry was immediately aware of its potential as a subject for a photo essay, but the sheer scale of the topic meant that it didn’t become a defined project until the spring of 1983. McCurry often works on projects concurrently, and he started to photograph for a monsoon essay while he was travelling through Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, working on his ‘India By Rail’ story. ‘Most of my photographic projects involve places I’ve 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 experienced the monsoon, I knew what 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 monsoon’s likely arrival in various regions in order to construct a rough shooting schedule that left plenty of flexibility; for while the monsoon’s arrival and effects are broadly known, neither can be predicted with precision. As McCurry says, ‘There’s 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 from there as things develop.’ In Sri Lanka he gathered the latest information about the projected arrival of the rains, then travelled northwards through India from June 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, I’d jump on a plane and get there. Whatever I might be doing when it started to rain, I’d drop everything and rush out to take pictures. A really 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 first instance, McCurry was faced with keeping his cameras and lenses dry – not an easy proposition while wading through chest-high floodwaters or fighting 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 fifty 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 difficulties, McCurry was able to capture stunning images, from scenes 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,

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Locals riding a rickshaw through heavy monsoon rain, Varanasi, India, 1983

Dates & Locations1983–4 Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka

SynopsisBoth a blessing and a curse, destructive and sustaining, the monsoon affects half the world’s people. Infamous for torrential rain-bearing winds that pore across Asia from tropical oceans, the monsoon remains one of life’s 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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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 calm before the rains came, McCurry documented the fishermen 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 few weeks in the little fishing 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 fisherman’s house, waking at 4 a.m. to spend the day with him and his friends in their carved dugout canoes. I sat in the bottom of the boat with my camera bag while one oarsman knelt in front of me, another behind. Waves would wash over the sides, but the fishermen just laughed. They fished until it was impossible to take their boats out. It was a difficult life, and every year there were men who didn’t 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 world’s great documentary photographers. One day, while photographing from a bridge near Goa, the saturated wooden 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, observing the ward through a drowsy haze. ‘It was a large room with overhead fans and droning flies, and nuns that seemed to float by. I was on an intravenous drip. The patient on one side of me was handcuffed to his bed, and the man on the other side was a recent amputee. I couldn’t move, and I was afraid to ask what had happened for fear they’d say I would never walk again. I finally recovered enough that I got up and left, before I was discharged, and went a friend’s house to recuperate. About a week later I was

shooting again.’ Back on his feet, McCurry took a series of

photographs that illustrate how the 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 now perilous (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 them the 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 McCurry’s tenacity in the face of potential danger, particularly

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Chaiwalla in monsoon floods, Porbandar, India, 1983

following his earlier fall – or perhaps an optimistic sense of security that comes from encountering the world through the rectangular frame of a viewfinder.

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 him in Delhi, as he photographed vendors selling food from street carts with casual nonchalance, despite being utterly drenched (see p. 64). ‘That’s when I realized that I wasn’t 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 floods. Poorer people would simply throw cadavers into the river – sometimes within a few feet of where people were washing.’

Rising floodwaters 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 from buildings 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 room on the second floor of a hotel that was empty save for the night watchman. The ground floor was flooded, 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). A local 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 floated among the garbage and sewage.’ Another concern

was leeches. ‘I had them crawling up my trousers and on my back, between my toes, even in my hair. I used salt to get them off, or I’d burn them loose. They would swell up like balloons with blood.’ Undeterred, he would be out again the next day.

McCurry’s travels took him from places 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 India–Pakistan 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 storm growing – 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 they’re driven to do when the crops fail, and they clustered together to

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River, swollen by the Monsoon rains, snaking through Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia, 1984

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this green soup, seemingly disembodied.’ In what looks at first 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.

McCurry’s 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 they’re a disaster on the other, and one that most people can’t escape. They can only watch as the floodwaters seep into their living rooms. There’s a sense of fatalism in 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 from the ceilings. When there’s drought, they wait; when there’s flood, 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-filled heat not meant for even mad dogs or Englishmen, wallowing in filthy 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 world’s population is affected by the whim of these winds. This is the reality, and it will stay with me forever.’

Evening light catching rain-soaked paddy fields, near the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, 1983

Girls seeking shelter beneath a rice basket, Java, Indonesia, 1983

shield themselves from the sand and dust, singing and praying and barely able to stand.’

The resulting picture (see p. 57) is one of McCurry’s 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 can’t 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 difficult. ‘It can be hard, especially when you’ve already stopped many times, or it’s raining, or too cold or too hot, or if you’re in the middle of a conversation. In some ways, it’s easier when you’re working alone, or with only an assistant. Then we always work to get the right picture, and that may mean stopping fifty 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 flew to 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 sun’s rays bursting through saturated clouds, as the annual cycle of the monsoon rains reached its final weeks (see below left).

As the summer rains died away on the subcontinent, McCurry made plans to travel to China, Australia and Indonesia from December to March, seeking out the farthest reaches of the Asian monsoon system. In Australia, he wanted to see how the 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 from eucalyptus bark – living with their environment rather than fighting against it. In Indonesia, he spent a week in the mountains of Java, where the massive Galunggung volcano had erupted just a few months before and was continuing to spew ash into the atmosphere. From there he moved on to the city of Surabaya, travelling around by boat to witness how quickly nature began to take hold once the flood waters rushed in. ‘In a place called Bojonegoro, a neighbourhood had been flooded for fifteen 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

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