Could it, at times, be frustrating to have taken one of the world’s most famous photographs? Steve McCurry’s ‘Afghan Girl’ (1984) is, according to the Royal Geographic Society, the most recognised photo on the planet. You can summon it to mind in a trice: a beautiful young refugee of about 12, her head covered with a rough red shawl, stares out at the camera with those pale green eyes.
But what Steve McCurry’s vast, World Atlas-sized new retrospective portfolio shows is just how many other, perhaps even better, photographs he’s taken of the country over the past 40 years; how many other Afghan girls there are in the shadow of that green-eyed superstar. One portrait of a child in blue-grey taken in Ghazni six years later is especially intense.
If, after an afternoon with McCurry’s Afghanistan, I rather resented that original girl, it’s only a tribute to the rest.
McCurry’s known as a war photographer and his biography sure fits the bill: he caught his first break, just before the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, by crossing the Pakistan border in local dress.
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