Steve McCurry India

Christy Paz                                                                          4/1/16  City Tech                                                                   Photography 1

The Steve McCurry’s Exhibition is in the Rubin Museum. The physical space has low ceilings and all of the walls were painted in dark blue. The text on top of the wall giving descriptions to the picture were in white. The room was dark, except for the lights that were shining on the the pictures on the walls and some light coming from the exhibitions on the floors above and below us through the spiraling staircase in the center of the room. The Pictures that Steve McCurry took were not directly flat on the wall, but was elevated out of the wall with probably a board under it to help support it. The pictures were also not framed. All of the photos were related to india in some way and were taken in india. It varied from having portraits of people from india to the seater conditions that were in india like the monsoon or the dust storms. It also had pictures of indian cities and houses that people interacted with.

The kind of  places that were in Steve McCurry’s india exhibition were more rural places in india. Most photos were in towns or very natural places in india. A lot of the people that were photographed were skinny. The homes that were photographed looked nothing like suburban america and instead had many small houses close to each other. The people in these places also don’t look like they rely heavily on electronics and technology like in america. What I found interesting is how the photos portray what the people value instead like in the picture of the students in the university learning how to make cloth or the picture of the man up to his neck in water trying to save his old fashioned sewing machine. We do not see how the people with a lot of wealth live their day and instead we see how average everyday people in india live.

One photograph I love in the exhibit is the photograph of the running child that was taken in Johdpur, India, http://stevemccurry.com/galleries/india. I love this picture because I live how the leading lines focus on him, I like the fact the diagonal lines go with his motion and I like the fact that the child photo was actually taken in motion. I feel like the things mentioned previously makes the photo feel more alive and breathtaking. I also like the contrast that the child is wearing fancy clothing but is running around around bear footed.

I think that Steve McCurry’s photo of the Afghan girl is so iconic because I think that Steve McCurry was able to show people beauty in a place where a lot of people don’t think beauty is. I also think that this photo became so icon because it showed the beauty of an average person in Afghanistan rather then this being a model or a person in high class standing. The biggest take away I had from this exhibition as a whole is that beauty and uniqueness can come from anywhere, not from a select few and that you should be appreciative for the things you have because there are plenty of people that struggle everyday.