Steve McCurry - Essay Example

Steve McCurry The role of photography in art is still ambiguous. Yet, it can be termed as an art as it can present the viewer with an entire story. The mere fact is that photographs are not just still images hanging at a particular point of time but they can make the viewer’s mind travel a long way, effectively engaging their minds. “Otherizing” is a unique feature of photography, which can be defined as conveying some meaning to the viewer along with the photograph so that the viewer interpret the picture in a certain way. In fact, this is what happens when a viewer sees something that they cannot actually relate to. The artists who are effective in otherizing manage to convey the feeling with minimal effort and the communication takes place in a vey subtle way though the overall effect is rather large. One of such photographers is Steve McCurry who is well known for his dramatic pictures. His most famous photograph is the Afghan Girl (1984). McCurry is a photographer of armed conflicts including the Iran-Iraq war, Lebanon Civil War, the Cambodian Civil War, the Islamic Insurgency in the Philippines, the Gulf war, the Afghan War and so on and on. Throughout his photography career, he focused on the consequences of war on human life, and the specialty of his work is that the effects are not in the landscape, not in the dress, but simply in the face and eyes of human face. A close analysis of the works by McCurry reveals that many of the works by McCurry proves that he is trying to otherize the subjects, and this otherization comes as a result of the traits of colonialism and the concept of supremacy of the West which remain in both the conscious and unconscious of the photographer. The West always had a curiosity towards the Oriental Other, and this tendency is clearly seen in the works of McCurry. The pictures to be analyzed here are the Afghan Girl (1985; 2002). The first picture was shot in an informal school in a refugee camp. The photograph shows a girl in red burqua with the backdrop of a green building. Her face is somewhat youthful, but her eyes are wide open, fearful, doubtful, and green in color. A look into the eyes of the Afghan girl reveals a lot of things to the viewer. First of all, the problems suffered by the girl in her life are evident in her watchful, vigilant and untrusting eyes. McCurry makes sure that the youth and innocence of the girl well-contrasts with the fear in the girl’s eyes. One can see that McCurry has selected a green building as the backdrop of the picture. Coincidently, or intentionally, the green color of the backdrop is seen in the girl’s eyes too. In addition, the green background is combined with the green burqua worn by the girl, thus attracting the viewer to the eyes as they seem to pop. Furthermore, the picture is taken in a low light setting so that the face and eyes receive more attention. Though the wrinkles and burns of the burqua are hidden, the overall effect is a revelation in concealment. A close analysis of the picture reveals that the girl does not look like a thirteen year old girl, and the main reason behind the over-aging is the fear in her eyes. One can see that this fear is again supplemented by the defiance evident in her eyes. In order to understand how the great artist is not free from the sin of otherizing, one should look at the other photograph as well. Now, it is necessary to turn to the second picture of the same girl McCurry took after seventeen years (2002). This time, the artist visited the place again and met the girl. By this time, she was between 28 and 30, and with her husband’s permission, he took the second photograph of the Afghan girl. The first point visible in the second photograph is the lifelessness in her eyes. Though fearful, the first photo is filled with a lot of life, but in the second photo, there is no energy in the eye, and it has lost its glitter. In addition, the artist uses the technique of using dark colors instead of the green and red in the first one. Though her face still manages to stand out, it blends with the background because the burqua and the background are equally dark. In addition, one can see that while the burqua covered her face powerfully in the first photo, in the second one, it falls straight down, indicating a lack of energy and enthusiasm. In the first picture, the background was green and light but in the second one, it is dark and even darker than the burqua she wears. These settings make her eyes much duller and darker than they actually are. One can see that the red burqua and green backdrop play a great role in making the viewer aware of the fact that she is still a girl in the first picture, and in the second, the dark background and the purple burqua make the viewer easily understand how her life has changed. Thus, the contrast between the photos is really striking, because it reveals how the life of the girl has changed. According to the information they collected, the girl married a man as had been arranged since an early age. She had already given birth to four girls and one of the children had died in infancy. Though her husband was a bakery worker, the money he made was not sufficient to meet the medical expenses to treat Gula’s asthma (Newman and McCurry). Thus, the first comment from a Western viewer will be that he has presented the life of women in Afghan in a realistic way. Now, it is necessary to understand how the element of othorizing as a result of Orientalism is visible in the work of McCurry. In the opinion of Barrett, “relying on stated intents can lad to passive interpreters and over-reliance on what the photographer says rather than what the photograph itself expresses” (255). The picture Afghan Girl (1985) came as the magazine cover of National Geographic. The caption of the picture said “Haunted eyes tell of an Afghan refugee’s fears.” Thus, in the opinion of Lutz, this caption leads the viewer to automatically focus on her gaze (36). In other words, National Geographic and McCurry were in the mission to find a subject and present it as haunted and fearful because firstly, they were exploring a non-Western country, and secondly, it is war-torn. The story about the girl is printed along her shoulder “Along Afghanistan’s War-torn Frontier” and the “war-torn” passes directly through a tear in her cloth. In addition, one can see that the head cloth and her eyes both are in green color. People with a little of knowledge of photography will easily admit that this color combination is intentional, to please the aesthetics of the viewer. A perfect example of this desire to project the Middle Eastern Others as something different, exotic, and natural is evident from the fact that the bright, sea-green color is selected for her eyes. In the opinion of Snow, this will “confound the viewer and complicates the viewer’s notion of what the Middle Eastern Other looks like” (33). Evidently, McCurry was not more interested in presenting what exactly was happening in the Middle East than in appeasing the curiosity of the West which tends to view the East as exotic and interesting. This effectiveness of McCurry to communicate more stories than most journalists is acknowledged by various scholars. To this question, he responds: “The first thing to me is the human aspect of the picture, to try to convey some sort of empathy with the subject and, secondly, the composition and the form of how that pictures put together. I like to have the photo communicate what its like to be that person. I want to have some sort of insight into the human condition of the subject. That’s the most interesting part of the work, as opposed to something which is just composition and form and color. I like color photography, but when the picture’s just about color, I don’t think it really goes vey far. I think it really needs to say something about a person or give some insight into their life or how their life is different than mine” (The Nine Lives of Steve McCurry). After the above analysis, one clearly understands what is meant by McCurry in saying “to try to convey some sort of empathy”. Being a photographer, McCurry has seriously resorted to othorizing in order to create the kind of curiosity the West always had towards the Other. In addition, McCurry claims that he wants to “give some insight into their life or how their life is different than mine”. Thus, one gets the clear idea that the artist was trying to communicate how really “exotic” the non-Westerners are by selecting the particular subject. If one still doubts how the photographs make the people think in the way the West wants, it is necessary to look into the situation of the same subject after 17 years (Afghan Girl 2002). The second one selects another color combination as if the color of Afghan has changed, and the color of the girl’s eyes is no more bright-green as if she paints it in different colors in different years. With the mastery of a writer who tells fictional stories, McCurry changed everything intentionally, and makes the viewers focus on only those things which will help him present the story. Admittedly, in both the pictures, the main point that catches the attention of the viewer is the “gaze”. Foucault says “where there is power, there is resistance” (349). One who understands how the West claims itself as the only game in the town will easily understand how McCurry, as a product of the West, has resorted to introduce bias in the work so that the West is presented with what they love to believe in. The defiance and resistance the viewers experience from the gaze will help strengthen the belief that the West has a kind of supremacy and this power leads to defiance and resistance. In the words of Foucault, “Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, render it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it” (Foucault 352). Thus, one can say that the pictures effectively otherize the East. In the opinion of Berger, the relation between the East and the West has always placed the West in a dominant position. In addition, the West has always placed masculine gender in a more powerful position (119). These two factors make it more than evident that McCurry was using the photographs simply to reaffirm how the West loves to think of the non-Western Other. In the words of Scarry, the effort was to continue the notion of the West as masculine and powerful and the Other as weak and feminine (51). Thus, this masculine West always gets a kind of excitement by unveiling the feminine Other and gazing at them. In addition, in the opinion of Barrett, one can see an effort in the second picture to present the West as the savior from the veil, or lack of freedom as the West has always claimed. This is evident from the fact that the girl Sharbat herself claims that her burqua is “a beautiful thing; it is not a curse” (Newman and McCurry). Giving no attention to this claim, the photographer claims that the burqua “walls her off from the world” and that “seventeen years after she stared out from the cover of National Geographic, a former Afghan refugee comes face-to-face with the world once more” (Newman and McCurry). Evidently, the works of McCurry are a clear continuation of the Orientalism the West has cherished for quite long. This Orientalism, or the desire to gaze at the non-Western Other and the effort to present the East as studio tropes of exotic people, is seen in the works of many artists. A perfect example is the works of Delacroix. Many of his works exhibit nude non-Western females in an effort to present the Other as exotic and romantic. To illustrate, his works like Reclining Female Nude, Nude Man looks (1854) and Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1855) show this Western desire to unveil the non-West. The first photograph is just a part of his nude series and the most important thing in this photograph along with the others in the series is the presence of a nude non-Western woman and a Western man. Evidently, the woman in the picture is non-White, and hence represents the Oriental Other. As the woman represents the Orient, the photo effectively embodies both sexual and non-Western othering (Scarry 86). In total, it becomes evident that the works of McCurry are just a continuation of the centuries long Orientalism. Being a product of the West, he possesses the notion that the West is in some way superior to the non-West. In addition, being a photographer, he is more inclined to continue the long cherished belief that the non-West is something exotic and worth gazing at. Moreover, the photographer cherishes the belief that unveiling the exotic gives a kind of pleasure to the viewers. Works Cited McCurry, Steve. In the Shadow of Mountains. New York: Phaidon Press, 2007. Print. McCurry, Steve. Looking East: Portraits. New York: Phaidon Press, 2006. Print. “The Nine Lives of Steve McCurry”. UTNE READER. N.d. Utne.com. Web. 18 Dec. 2013 Barrett, Terry. Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. Print. Newman, Cathy and Steve McCurry. “Photographs by Steve McCurry”. National Geographic 201.4 (2002). Print. Lutz, Catherine A. and Jane L. Collins. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1993. Print. Snow, Edward. “Theorizing the Male Gaze: Some Problems.” Representations. No. 25. (Winter, 1989): pp. 30-41. Web. 30 Nov. 2009. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Print. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Company and Penguin Books, 1972. Print. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print. List of Figures Steve McCurry - Afghan Girl (1985) Steve McCurry - Afghan Girl (2002) Women of Algiers in their Apartment Reclining female nude, nude male looks, (1854) Read More