Just a Moment

Posted in Uncategorized on May 23, 2013 by stevemccurry

AFGHN-12772Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth
plants something in his soul.
- Thomas Merton

INDIA-10720Jodhpur, India

This moment is your life
- Omar Khayyam

INDIA-10843India

Know the true value of time;
snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.
- Lord Chesterfield

TIBET-10009Monk at Jokhang Temple, Tibet

Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks,
months, or years, but of moments.
- Sarah Breathnach

INDIA-10202India

At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things
that could have heppened but, didn’t.
The magic moments go unrecognized, and
then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything.
- Paulo Coelho

ETHIOPIA-10153Ethiopia

BRAZIL-10010NFBrazil

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.
- Walt Whitman

ETHIOPIA-10032Ethiopia

INDIA-10763India

This moment contains all moments.
- C. S. Lewis

INDIA-10640India

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment…
- Martin Luther King, Jr

CAMBODIA-10377Burma

Rejoice in the things that are present;
all else is beyond thee.
- Montaigne

CAMBODIA-10032Cambodia

Forever is composed of nows.
- Emily Dickinson

TIBET-10745
Tibet

_SM14180, Myanmar, Burma, 02/2011, BURMA-10314Burma

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave,
find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of
opportunities and look toward another land.
There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
-  Henry David Thoreau

THAILAND-10147Thailand

BRAZIL-10066Brazil

The dream was always running ahead of me.
To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
- Anais Nin

INDIA-11527NFIndia

In a person’s lifetime there may be not more than half a dozen occasions that
he can look back to in the certain knowledge that right then, at that moment,
there was room for nothing but happiness in his heart.
- Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

INDIA-10005NF4India

Very honored to receive the award of  Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, by the Minister of French Culture.

Grief, Grind, and Glory of Work

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 16, 2013 by stevemccurry

Last month the world heard the tragic news
that more than a thousand people working at a clothing factory in Bangladesh,
were killed when 
the factory they were working in collapsed.

Myanmar, Burma, 1994, final book_iconicBurma

The appetite for cheap clothing in the West is insatiable.
The people making the clothing  often pay the true cost of these items.
The scale of this factory in Burma is vast.
The sense that these workers are just part of an immense machine is
accentuated by 
the pink shirts they are obliged to wear.

BURMA-10221NF, Myanmar (Burma), 07/1994Burma

Labor disgraces no man;
unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.  

- Ulysses S. Grant

YEMEN-10053NF4Yemen

Whether it is men fishing,  nuns washing dishes, miners digging beneath the earth, or 
working in the heat of a steel mill, work is universal, yet intensely personal. Millions work in order to survive, and for them,
there 
is no debate about how to achieve a life/work balance.  

INDONESIA-10006Woman working in a field devastated by volcanic debris and flood waters.  Java, Indonesia

INDIA-10330NFShoe repair shop in India

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.
- Horace

BURMA-10619NFBurma

INDIA-10844India

Your life is a journey, not a rest.
You are travelling to the promised land, from the cradle to the grave.
The Sunday at Home, December 7th 1854

AFGHN-12777Candy Factory, Kabul, Afghanistan

INDIA-11144, India, Bombay, 1997Mumbai, India

INDIA-10456NF
Gujarat, India

All happiness depends on courage and work.
- Honore de Balzac

AFGHN-10051Miners search for gems.  Hindu Kush, Afghanistan

The heights by great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

YUGOSLAVIA-10068MKS Steelworks, Serbia

JAPAN-10026Japan

Working for long periods under extreme stressful work conditions can lead to
sudden death, a phenomenon the Japanese call karoshi. The word in China is guolaosi.

PAKISTAN-10006NFLandi Kotal, Pakistan

AFGHN-10146Bakery run by Afghan widows, Kabul, Afghanistan

Dubrovnik, Croatia, 1989Croatia

Many find their identity in the work they do. Some enjoy intense satisfaction in their work.
For others, the line between work and play is hard to find.

Tibetans, 07/2001, final book_iconicIndia

INDIA-10679NF2, Bombay, India, 09/1993. Textiles,
           Mumbai, India

A suger cane farmer stand in his field in Luzon, Philippines, 1985Sugar cane farmer, Philippines

Everything yields to diligence.
- Thomas Jefferson

BRAZIL-10044NF8, Brazil, Latin America, Lavazza, 08/2010Drying coffee beans, Brazil

If a man is called a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or
Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.  He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of
heaven and Earth will pause to say, Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.  
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

KASHMIR-10016Flower Seller, Dal Lake, Kashmir

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The Universal Language

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 7, 2013 by stevemccurry

INDIA-10841 (1) India

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.
- William Arthur Ward

TIBET-10535Tibet

AFGHN-12243Afghanistan 

A smile is the universal welcome.
- Max Eastman

BURMA-10454Burma

AFGHN-12232Afghanistan

INDIA-10843India

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.
- Washington Irving

INDIA-10004NF  An Indian tailor caught in the monsoon floodwaters in
Porbandar, India

Look back, and smile on perils past.
- Sir Walter Scott

AFGHN-10118NFAfghanistan

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.  
- William Shakespeare, Othello

KASHMIR-10017 (1)Kashmir

00093_08. Mother and Daughter in Afghanistan, 2003, AFGHN-12678NFAfghanistan

CAMBODIA-10115NFCambodia

Every smile makes you a day younger.
- Chinese Proverb

BURMA-10024Burma

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night;
a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.
– Henry Ward Beecher

China, 1984, final book_iconicChina

HONDURAS-10018NFHonduras

TIBET-10069 Tibet

EUROPE-10072, Berlin, Germany, 1988, GERMANY-10059Celebration in Berlin, Germany

Peace begins with a smile.
- Mother Teresa

AFGHN-13293, Afghanistan, 1984. A man holds a baby.Afghanistan

VIETNAM-10010NFVietnam

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress,
and grows brave by reflection.
– Thomas Paine

_SM16823, Myanmar, Burma, 02/2011, BURMA-10289NFBurma

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but
sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

AFGHN-12369Afghanistan

Beauty in Imperfection

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2013 by stevemccurry

_SM12316; Rome; Italy; 05/2011; ITALY-10111final print_MACROItaly

Wabi Sabi is a way of seeing the world that is at the heart of Japanese culture.
 It finds beauty and harmony in what is simple, imperfect, natural, modest, and mysterious.
- Mark Reibstein, Wabi Sabi

TIBET-11043NFTibet

Tranquil simplicity,
rustic elegance,
imperfect beauty…these are qualities that wabi sabi embraces.
Wabi Sabi:  the Art of Everyday Life,  Diane Durston

CAMBODIA-10540_blogCambodia

Taj Mahal, Agra, India, 2010India

Wabi-sabi suggests that beauty is a dynamic event that occurs between you and something else.
Beauty can spontaneously occur at any moment
given the proper circumstances, context, or point of view.
Beauty is thus an altered state of consciousness, an extraordinary moment of poetry and grace.

-  Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

CAMBODIA-10309Cambodia

BURMA-10218Burma

It is only with age that you acquire the gift to evaluate decay, the epiphany of Wordsworth,
the wisdom of wabi-sabi: nothing is perfect, nothing is complete, nothing lasts.
- Paul Theroux

IRAQ-10057Iraq

00779_03, Morocco, 03/1988, MOROCCO-10165. A decorative door.Morocco

The beauty of wabi-sabi is rooted in modesty that is elegantly perceived.
The aesthetic pleasures of wabi-sabi depend on attitude and practice as much, or more, than on the materiality itself.
- Leonard Koren, op.cit.

_SM15987, Havana, Cuba, 2010, CUBA-10021final print_UrbanArt'12Havana, Cuba

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
quoted in the Daily Good

ETHIOPIA-10109Ethiopia

00408_ 10..Cape Town, Capetown, South Africa.  March, 1996,  SOUTH_AFRICA-10012South Africa

The underlying principles of Wabi Sabi are diametrically opposed
to those of their Western counterparts, 

whose values are rooted in a worldview that
values permanence, grandeur, symmetry, and perfection.

- Andrew Juniper

SM18564, 07/2011, ITALY-10368. A flower vase in Italy. Retouched_Sam SchubertItaly

For a lovely bowl
Let us arrange these flowers
For there is no rice
– Matsuo Bashō,  Japanese Haiku

ETHIOPIA-10048Ethiopia

If you look closely at a tree you’ll notice it’s knots and dead branches, just like our bodies.
What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully.
- Matthew Fox

NEPAL-10006Nepal

DSC_4216; Japan; 05/2011; May; 2011, JAPAN-10101NFfinal print_MACROJapan

LAOS-10013Laos

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.
- John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

CAMBODIA-10002View of Preah Khan, Cambodia

 A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections.
- Chinese proverb

RUSSIA-10067NFRussia

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Back to Burma

Posted in Uncategorized on April 24, 2013 by stevemccurry
BURMA-10006

Procession of Nuns, Yangon

This is Burma, and it is unlike any land you know about.
Rudyard Kipling, Letters from the East (1898)

BURMA-10075

Fisherman on Inle Lake with the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda in the distance

Burma is referred to  as Amarapura, the Land of Immortality, and
Yadanarbon, the Land of the Gems.
Today it is known as Suvanabhomi, the Golden Land.

BURMA-10005

Mingun Pagoda

Burma has a uniquely preserved cultured in a unparalled landscape.
Rich in natural resources and virgin landscapes,
the country has unique features which set it apart from the rest of the world.

BURMA-10004

Golden rock, Kyaiktiyo, Myanmar

 

Pagan, Burma, 2010

Yangon

 

BURMA-10069

Bagan, the ancient capital, where thousands of temples, monasteries, and stupas were built.

 

BURMA-10153

Sittwe, Burma

 

BURMA-10568

Mandalay

Even the son of the foolish can be a sage ; even the son of a poor man can be rich.
Do not be contemptuous of anyone.

Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon, Burma, 2010, final print_perugia

Yangon

 

BURMA-10044

Yangon, Burma

 

Monk reads Buddhist scripture at monastery in Rangoon, Myanmar (Burma), 1985

Monk reads Buddhist scriptures at monastery in Yangon

One who has knowledge is honored by others.
Strive daily to get knowledge.
- Proverb

Rangoon, Burma, 1994. Magnum Photos, NYC62603, MCS1994009 K207.

Yangon train

 

BURMA-10314

Inle Lake

 

BURMA-10091NF

Monk walks through a Buddha statue workshop, Mandalay

For the temple-bells are callin’, and it’s there that I would be
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
O the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!
- Rudyard Kipling

BURMA-10085

Young Monk in Mandalay

In battle we need a warrior,
in a commotion a counselor,
during meals a loved one,
a wise man in an emergency
- Proverb

BURMA-10032NF3

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

“Human beings the world over need freedom and security that they may be able to realize their full potential.”

BURMA-10280

Yangon

I am not thesis
I am not antithesis
I am dialectic
Just a contradiction
Patched up in palimpsest.
 - Portion of poem by Zeyar Lynn, Burma
Translated by Ko Ko Thett

BURMA-10033

Yangon

 

_SM16706, Myanmar, Burma, 02/2011, BURMA-10313 Untold_book

Yangon 

Burma is  the most religious Buddhist country if measured by the
percentage of monks in the population and proportion of income spent on religion.

BURMA-10231

Yangon

Life in Black and White

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 15, 2013 by stevemccurry
INDIA-10941NF

India

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young,
compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and
tolerant of the weak and strong.
Someday in your life you will have been all of these.
-  George Washington Carver

MEXICO-10001

Mexico City

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn,
good and ill together.

- William Shakespeare

AFGHN-13198; Afghanistan; 1980. A young girl holds her sibling.

Afghanistan

The great use of a life is to spend for something that outlasts it.
- William James

JAPAN-10014

Japan

May you live every day of your life.
- Jonathan Swift

INDIA-10904

India

 

00829_01, Afghanistan, 1980, AFGHN-13342

Afghanistan



This boy has never held a book in his hands, has never attended school, and has never known
a life without the threat of violence.

AFRICA-10204, Morocco, September, 2008, Final print_Novartis,

Morocco

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

00847_15, Afghanistan, 1980, AFGHN-13564

Afghanistan

 

Novartis Group Annual Report 2009, Back Cover, AACD, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Brazil

 

INDIA-12060

India

LATIN_AMERICA-10055, February, 2009, final print_Novartis

Brazil

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.
- Boris Pasternak

INDIA-10899

India

 

afghn-13696

Afghanistan

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
- Rabindranath Tagore

INDIA-12059

India

The potential possibilities of any child are the most
intriguing and stimulating in all creation.

- Ray L. Wilbur

SOUTH_AFRICA-10019

South Africa

 

SOUTH_AFRICA-10014

South Africa

USA-10186

United States

 

INDIA-12058NF

India

 

SOUTH_AFRICA-10021

South Africa

 

SOUTH_AFRICA-10016

South Africa

A the end of your life, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took,
but how many moments took your breath away.
- Shing Xiong

The Life of Things

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , , on April 8, 2013 by stevemccurry
VIETNAM-10034

Vietnam

While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
- William Wordsworth,
Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

_SM19701, Myanmar/Burma, BURMA-10484

Burma

 

_SM13955, Rome, Italy, 05/23/2011

Italy

 

BURMA-10470NF2

Burma

 

ITALY-10465

Italy

 

INDIA-11589

India

Portraits often seem pregnant with speech, or as if their subjects have just finished saying something,

or will soon speak the thoughts that inform their faces, the thoughts we’re invited to read.
Landscapes are full of presences, visible or unseen; soon nymphs or a stag or a
band of hikers will make themselves heard.

NEPAL-10006

Nepal

But no word will ever be spoken here, among the flowers and snails,
the solid and dependable apples,
this heap of rumpled books,
this pewter plate on which a few opened oysters lie, giving up their silver.

_DSC9141, India, 2007. INDIA-11923NF. A clay monkey diety in India.

India

These are resolutely still, immutable, poised for a forward movement that will never occur.

The brink upon which still life rests is the brink of time, the edge of something about to happen.
Everything that we know crosses this lip, over and over,
like water over the edge of a fall, as what might happen does,
as any of the endless variations of what might come true does so,
and things fall into being,
tumble through the progression of existing in time.

BURMA-10178, Schwedagon, Yangon, Burma, February, 2010

Burma

But the still life resides in absolute silence.
― Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy

CAMBODIA-10145

Cambodia

 

Laos, 2004, Phaidon, Iconic Images, final book_iconic

Laos

 

Cinecitta, Italy, 07/2011, _SM18778

Italy

 

_SM15987, Havana, Cuba, 2010, CUBA-10021final print_UrbanArt'12

Cuba

 

_SM19448; Myanmar/Burma; BURMA-10483

Burma

 

_SM16798, myanmar, burma, 02/2011, BURMA-10312

Burma

 

_2SM2652; India; 04/2012; INDIA-11987. A dog sleeps.retouched_Sam Schubert

India

_SM12466_sf

Italy

 

_SM13459, Rome; Italy; 05/2011;

Italy

THAILAND-10143

Thailand

Still Life
Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-office never blink an eye.
A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an eye.
A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the
serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass whispering.
- Carl Sandburg

USA-10298

Kansas, United States

 

_DSC9625_sf

Burma

 

CAMBODIA-10076

Cambodia

 

INDIA-10279

India

Still Life
Sublime, serene
Found arrangements
Formal compositions.
Which is which?

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