STEVE MCCURRY: The Importance of Elsewhere [New York, NY]

Cavalier Galleries is pleased to announce the exhibition, Steve McCurry: The Importance of Elsewhere. McCurry’s compelling photographs will be on view October 18 through November 12 at Cavalier Galleries, 3 West 57^th Street, New York, New York.

The exhibition at Cavalier Galleries will include images from his extensive travels throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Accompanying the release of his new book, Afghanistan, will be an additional companion exhibition of twelve photographs featured in the publication.

Universally recognized as one of today's finest image makers, Steve McCurry has won many of photography's top awards.  Best known for his evocative color photography, McCurry captures the essence of human struggle and joy in the finest documentary tradition. A member of Magnum Photos since 1986, McCurry has searched and found the unforgettable. Many of his breathtaking images have become modern day icons.

Born in Philadelphia, McCurry attended Pennsylvania State University where he graduated cum laude. After working at a newspaper, he traveled to India to freelance, where he realized his passion for capturing the “unguarded moment.” In India, McCurry learned to watch and wait on life. If you wait, he realized, people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view.

McCurry garnered international attention for photographs taken when he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan shortly before the Russian invasion. The rolls of film he departed with, sewn into his clothing, were among the first images published of the conflict. McCurry’s coverage in Afghanistan won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, an award dedicated to photographers for exhibiting exceptional courage and enterprise. He has won many awards throughout his career, including Magazine Photographer of the Year, awarded by the National Press Photography Association. McCurry also received an unprecedented four first prizes in the World Press Photo Contest and has won the Olivier Rebbot Memorial Award twice.

Of his work, McCurry has said, "Most of my images are grounded in people. I look for…the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person's face. I try to convey what it is like to be that person, a person caught in a broader landscape, that you could call the human condition." The most recognizable example of this is his 1984 photograph of a young girl at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan. His striking photo of the “Afghan Girl” became a worldwide sensation when it was published as the cover image of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic.

A high point in his career was the rediscovery of the previously unidentified Afghan refugee girl that many have been described as the most recognizable photograph in the world today. When McCurry finally located Sharbat Gula after almost two decades, he said, "Her skin is weathered; there are wrinkles now, but she is as striking as she was all those years ago."

McCurry has covered many areas of international and civil conflict, including the Iran-Iraq war, the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, Beirut, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Gulf War, and continuing coverage of Afghanistan. He focuses on the human consequences of war, not only showing what war impresses on the landscape, but rather on the human face. His work has been featured in every major magazine in the world and frequently appears in National Geographic magazine with articles on Tibet, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and the temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia. McCurry is driven by an innate curiosity and sense of wonder about the world and everyone in it. He has the uncanny ability to cross boundaries of language and culture to capture stories of human experience.

McCurry has published many books including:

The Imperial Way (1985), Monsoon (1988), Portraits (1999), South Southeast (2000), Sanctuary (2002), The Path to Buddha: A Tibetan Pilgrimage (2003), Steve McCurry (2005), Looking East (2006), In the Shadows of Mountains (2007), Afghanistan (2017)