Steve McCurry is one of the greatest masters of contemporary photography and a point reference for a vast audience. Young people, especially, find in his photos a way of looking at our time and, in a sense, “they recognise themselves.”
A complex universe of experiences and emotions is enclosed in all Steve McCurry’s photos and many of its images, starting from the portrait of Sharbat Gula, have become true icons, well known everywhere in the world.
The new exhibition is set up in the impressive Citroniera delle Scuderie Juvarriane in the Reggia di Venaria, a majestic monument just outside Turin, a World Heritage Site and a masterpiece at the top of the Baroque architecture and of the European sites. The exhibition is the largest and most comprehensive one that Civita and Sudest57 have dedicated, since 2009, to the great American photographer. All exhibitions dedicated to Steve McCurry, everywhere in Italy, have registered over 700,000 visitors.
The exhibition offers the most famous photos taken during McCurry’s long career spanning over thirty years, but also some of his most recent works and other pictures not yet published in his many books. The tour opens with a brand new section of black and white photos taken by Steve McCurry between 1979 and 1980 during his first reportage in Afghanistan, where he entered together with the mujahideen fighting against the Soviet invasion. At the end of the tour are some very recent photos, of course in colour, taken in Afghanistan too, thus framing the story of a long adventure dedicated to photography.
McCurry returned many times in Afghanistan during the last 35 years. The girl he photographed in a Pakistan refugee camp in Peshawar came in fact from Afghanistan. The picture has become an absolute icon of world photography, but also a symbol of hope for peace that seems impossible in a world shaken by wars and mass exoduses. The photographer’s most famous portrait will be displayed along with two others, one of which was made by McCurry more than 17 years after the first one, after finally having found the one-time girl at the end of a long search.
The exhibition, curated by Biba Giacchetti and staged in the Citroniera of Venaria Reale by Peter Bottazzi, proposes a long journey into McCurry’s world, from Afghanistan to India, from Southeast Asia to Africa, from Cuba to the USA, from Brazil to Italy, through his vast and fascinating book of images.
McCurry’s photos offer an extraordinary gallery of portraits and landscapes in which the human presence is always the protagonist, even when only evoked. In the charming Peter Bottazzi’s set up, McCurry’s humanity comes towards us through his eyes, involving us with its collective dimension. We find ourselves in a merry-go-round where ages, cultures, ethnic groups, are mixed in a way that McCurry grasps with extraordinary intensity.
The same intensity also characterises the places and centrality of people in the fourty suggestive shots made by McCurry in Africa, Latin America and Asia as part of ¡TIERRA !, the Lavazza sustainability project which Steve embraced with passion. The photographer shares the same values and documented with his own unique style the faces and the realities of the communities involved. McCurry’s images cover a period of over ten years, and reflect his vision of the work and daily life of coffee producers, on which the whole Lavazza project focuses.
McCurry has been able to collect poetic images, in places where life is difficult, but also in Italian cities from Venice to Cinecittà. Among these are some of his recent shots, where the photographer surprisingly found an almost metaphysical dimension of space. Absence is sometimes at the base of the story and his old passion for the movie world emerges forcefully.
The exhibition also shows McCurry’s most terrible shots, documenting the war, the violence and the atrocities where, unfortunately, humanity becomes the protagonist and which McCurry recorded with his reporter lens. These pictures go from the Twin Towers photographed from his studio in New York, to the Gulf war, from the war in Afghanistan to Japan after the tsunami, from the child soldiers recruited in the Middle East to the pain in hospitals.
The exhibition includes a selection of more than 250 large-format photos, chosen by Biba Giacchetti together with Steve McCurry. An audio guide is available to all visitors and is included in the ticket price: the great photographer tells first-hand about his photos with anecdotes and fascinating testimonies. A video is also available and is dedicated to his travels, built around the “principles” which he condensed into his extraordinary experience and his conception of photography.
Besides presenting a wide and updated selection of Steve McCurry’s photos, the Venaria Reale exhibition aims to depict the adventure that is his life and his job. To follow the thread of his passions, to know his technique but also his desire to share his proximity to suffering and sometimes war, but also with joy and surprise. In his own voice, we can understand McCurry’s way of winning the trust of the people photographed: “I learned to be patient. If you wait long enough, people forget the camera and their soul begins to soar towards you.”
Born in Philadelphia in 1950, Steve McCurry soon began to work as a photographer in a local newspaper. After three years, he decided to travel to India and compose his first real portfolio with pictures of his trip. After the publication of his first important book about Afghanistan, he worked with some of the most prestigious magazines: Time, Life, Newsweek, Geo and National Geographic. Reporter on a thousand war fronts from Beirut to Cambodia, from Kuwait to former Yugoslavia, Steve McCurry always pushed himself to the front lines risking his life to witness the effects and consequences of conflicts around the world. A member of the Magnum agency since 1985, he has been repeatedly awarded with the World Press Photo Award, which is considered as a kind of Nobel Prize of photography.
In recent years, Steve McCurry went through a particularly productive period, with prestigious assignments and very demanding jobs, travelling to the places he loves most. Travelling has become a way of living: “Because just travelling and learning more about different cultures gives me joy and an inexhaustible charge.”
In addition to the now vast published works by McCurry, available in the exhibition’s bookshop is also a book edited by Biba Giacchetti (McCurry / Icons), presenting a selection of 50 among his most famous and beautiful pictures, about which McCurry has a special feeling. In a long conversation between Giacchetti and McCurry, for the first time the photographer tells us about his icons, often revealing their backgrounds.
The exhibition is organized by the Consortium La Venaria Reale and from Civita Mostre, in partnership with Sudest57 and Lavazza.
World Of Steve McCurry – Where and how
Dates:
April 1st to September 25th, 2016
Location:
Reggia di Venaria
Citroniera delle Scuderie Juvarriane
Piazza della Repubblica, 4
Venaria Reale (TO)
Timings:
Tuesday to Friday 9 am to 5 pm
Saturday, Sunday and holidays 9 am to 7.00 pm
Ticket office closes one hour earlier
Closed on Monday
(Opening times are subject to change in summer)
Tel. +39 011 4992333
www.lavenaria.it
www.mostrastevemccurry.it
You must be logged in to post a comment.