Children at Work

In developing countries one in six children from 5 to 14 years old is involved in child labor.

 

Nepal, 1983

In the least developed countries, 30 percent of all children are engaged in child labor.

 

Boy working in candy factory, Kabul, 2006

 

Worldwide, 126 million children work in hazardous conditions, often enduring beatings, humiliation and sexual violence by their employers.

 

An eleven-year-old boy working in gold mine, Mindinao, Philippines, 1985

 

An estimated 1.2 million children — both boys and girls — are trafficked each year into exploitative work in agriculture, mining, factories, armed conflict or commercial sex work.

 

Tibetan Girl, 2002

 

Children work in an opium field in Badakhshan,  Afghanistan. 1982

 

The highest proportion of child laborers is in sub-Saharan Africa, where 26 percent of children (49 million) are involved in work.  

 

Niger, 1995

 

Boy sells flowers in busy road, India 1993

 

Young Welder, Bombay, India, 1994

 

“Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together,  and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.”   -  Grace Abbott

Sources: www.unicef.org, www.ilo.org, www.crin.org

Next blog entry will be “Children at Play”

The Path to Buddha

I am often asked about which countries I enjoy photographing the most.  That’s very hard to answer, but I do enjoy going back again and again to Buddhist countries, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Bhutan, Tibet, Sri Lanka, and Burma. 

 

Buddha statue in Mandalay, Burma, 2008

 

Monk at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, Tibet, 2000

 

The ethics and the aesthetics of Buddhism are melded in a unique way. The vivid color of robes and sacred places contrast with the monochromatic tradition I grew up with.

 

 Young monks play with computer games in Sera Monastery in Bylakuppe, India, 2001

 

Every time I have visited a Buddhist monastery, I have seen a playfulness among the monks, a joy in the way they conduct themselves and the way they interact with each other. 

 

Young nun, Rangoon, Burma, 1994

 

Monks in the Rain, Angkor Wat, Cambodia, 1999

 

A monk studies Buddhist scripture in the late afternoon at a monastery in Aranyaprathet, Thailand, 1996

 

As I photographed the picture of the monk and the cat in a monastery in Thailand, it occured to me that all the qualities that I observed – contemplation, serenity, meditation – are ones that are antithetical to the hard-charging, ladder-climbing Western culture. 

 

Young monks study Buddhist scripture at a monastery in Litang, Kham, Tibet, 1999

 

Pilgrim praying at the Buddhist academy of Larung Gar, near Serthar, Kham, Tibet, 2001

 

The Monks have a way of taking something we could consider mundane, and transform it into something sacred. 

Candles are a form of offering at the Tibetan Prayer Festival, during which thousands are lit under the Bodi tree. Bodh Gaya, India, 2000

 

Monasteries have always been places of refuge for people and animals who have no other place to go.  Monks will share whatever they have, no matter how small. 

 

Woman meditates in Bagan monastery, Burma, 2008

 

Even though they get merits for helping people in need, one never has the impression that they do it for any other reason other than their good nature, dedication, and hospitality. 

 

Quotations from the Buddha:

“Teach this triple truth to all:  A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.”

“Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.”

“In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”

 

Children of War

Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,  those who are cold and are not clothed.

The world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.  — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Kabul, Afghanistan, 1992

Kabul, Afghanistan, 1993

Luzon, Philippines, 1986

Beirut, Lebanon, 1982

Kuwait City, 1991

A landmine victim, Pul i Khumri, north of Kabul, Afghanistan, 1992

Shepherd boy at Al Ahmadi, Kuwait, 1991

Kandahar, Afghanistan, 1985

Child with Dutch Soldier, Afghanistan, 2002

Tamil Tigers recruits during training, west of Batticola, Sri Lanka, 1995

Kabul, Afghanistan,  1992

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Veterans’ Day, 2009

Thank you to our active duty service members and all veterans today and every day.

Kuwait, 1991

Kuwait, 1991

Kuwait, 1991

 

Treating an Afghan child, Kabul, Afghanistan, 2002

 

 Iraq, 2003

 

Afghanistan, 2002

 

Luzon, Philippines, 1985

 

On assignment during Desert Storm, 1991

 

 

 

Unpublished, Unseen

Over the past thirty years, I have taken hundreds of thousands of pictures.  Many of them have been published in my books, in magazines, and seen in my exhibitions, but a majority have never been seen.  Here are a few of those unseen pictures.

Note:  November 9 – I have added some pictures at the bottom of the Berlin Wall which came down twenty years ago today.

Kashmir, 1999

 

Kashmir, 1998

 

Java, 1983

 

Burma, 1994

 

Australia, 1983

 

Kandahar, Afghanistan, 1992

 

Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 2006

 

Morocco, 1988

 

Manhattan neighborhood, 1996

 

Central Park, New York, NY, 1994

 

Fall of the Berlin Wall,  November, 1989

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Way it Was

Steam Train, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India, 1983

The art historian, Geoffrey Batchen, in writing about photography, said that one of the missions of photography is to represent and memorialize.

Fishermen, Weligama, South coast, Sri Lanka, 1995

These pictures could not be taken today.  In the past couple of decades the landscapes and cultures have changed.

Rice paddy fields,  Banaue, Philippines, 1985

It is my hope that these images will provide a record of  lost moments of culture.

Women Working in Fields, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India, 1996.  These fields are no longer being cultivated.

Some of these pictures are a “last look” at much that stands for cultural identity around the world. 

Railroad line inspector being pushed by a retinue of workers to check for wear and tear on the tracks, Agra, India, 1983

 

Farmer separating the wheat from the chaff. Baluchistan, Pakistan, 1980 

 

The  beautiful and sublime is going to disappear.  It has already.

 

A view looking downtown towards the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan, New York City, 1994.

It is more common to see a baseball hat and a Chicago Bulls jersey than traditional clothing in nearly every place I travel.

Tibet, 2000

 

 

 

 

 

 

Occupational Hazards

photo by Borut Sraj

One of the scariest experiences I’ve had in my career was crashing into a frigid glacial lake in the former Yugoslavia while on assignment for National Geographic.

A twilight moon rises above the Kamniske mountains and Slovenia’s Sava River Valley,  Slovenia.

I had hired a small, ultra-light, two-seater airplane in to do aerials over Bled Lake in Slovenia. The pilot flew down to the surface of the lake, very, very close — in fact so close that I told him to go up because we were only about five feet from the water.  If I had wanted to be that close I could have hired a boat, but it was too late. The wheels got caught in the water and we couldn’t pull out. We went down and as soon as the fuselage and the propeller hit the water, the propeller blew apart.

Rijeka, Croatia, 1989

We flipped upside down in the 40-degree water in the middle of February and immediately began to sink. The cockpit was not enclosed. The seatbelt was a jerry-rigged homemade device and I hadn’t studied it and couldn’t get it off me.

I realized I was going to die. I guess that part of your brain concerned with self-preservation kicked in, and I slid underneath the contraption, literally went underneath, and was able to swim to the surface. The pilot made it, but didn’t attempt to help me.  My passport and equipment went to the bottom. Fortunately the pilot and I were picked up by a fisherman within ten minutes. Days later the plane was raised but all of my equipment is still 60 feet down.

Picture of me in Lubiana before going to Lake Bled where my plane crashed.

There was another airplane incident in Africa.  Again, I was on assignment photographing the Sahel, that band of land that separates the Sahara Desert from the grasslands of the Savannah.

We got lost flying from Timbuktu in Mali back to the capital of Bamako. We had left in a sandstorm and started flying along the Niger River. I guess the pilot’s navigational instruments weren’t working. He literally could not find his way back to the capital.

Chari River in the Sahel region near N’Djamena, Chad,

I watched him circling and I started to wonder what was going on.   He came back down through the clouds. It was getting dark and there was a huge thunderstorm right in our path.  The pilot dropped the small craft to search for his bearings.

Fuel was getting low, and we could never make it back to Timbuktu.  To the south, an enormous black wall of clouds loomed from the horizon – a monsoon storm.  In vain, for a half an hour we scanned the landscape searching for an opening.  We had no radio contact, and and no navigational equipment.  We prepared our last thoughts.

Finally, the pilot spotted a millet field, agonizingly small, but flat.  As we thundered in, I watched the wheel of the plane miss a six-foot hole by a few steps.

Muddy field, Mali

We shuddered to a stop with a few hard bounces.  Villagers ran out from the surrounding bush in wonderment as the sky opened up.   We slept on the plane that night, and finally found a vehicle to take us back to the capital city of Bamako, fourteen hours of bone-rattling roads.

Niger River, Mali

Preposterous Grandeur

In Christopher Kremmer’s  book, The Carpet Wars, he writes this about Afghanistan:

“A landscape might be denuded, a human settlement abandoned or lost, but always, just beaneath the ground lies history of preposterous grandeur. . . They are everywhere, these individuals of undaunted humankind, irrepressibly optimistic and proud.”

Herat, Afghanistan, 1992

The beautiful city of Herat has been inhabited for over two millennia and has been fought over by invaders from Alexander the Great to the Soviets which picked Herat as one of their first battlefields.

Bala Hisar Fort, Herat, Afghanistan, 2002

When I photographed there, it looked like Dresden after World War II.  But the war with the Soviet Union had ended by the late 1980’s, and families had started to return from Iran and other countries to rebuild their homes.

A young man returns to his hometown of Herat, 1991

School boy, Herat, 1991

Herat has always been considered to be a cultural center where the arts, literature, architecture, and knowledge flourish.   Herat is a treasure trove of ancient forts, citadels, mosques, and minarets.

October, 2009

It is a privilege to have an exhibition of my photographs going on now at the Charhar Suq Cistern in Herat.  The Aga Khan Foundation is rebuilding the huge caravanserai in Herat which has four big branches.  Right in the intersection is the place called the Charhar Suq cistern.

Herati women looking at my picture of an orphan from Kandahar, October,  2009

During the first week, more than 1,800 people visited the exhibit along with 800 local high school students  field trips organized by the Afghan ogranization, Education Support Organization.

 

Greatest Show on Earth

The Kumbh Mela has been called the world’s largest act of faith and the greatest show on earth.

Allahabad, 2001

Millions of pilgrims, sadhus and saints, politicians, and tourists arrive on foot, in private jets and helicopters, by taxi, horses, cars, and bikes to the largest gathering on the planet.

Allahabad, 2001

Pilgrims believe that bathing in the river will cleanse them of their sins.  Many shave their heads, so there are thousands of barbers to help them for a few rupees. 

 Allahabad, 2001

While visiting India, Mark Twain remarked that, “Pilgrims plodded for months in heat to get here, worn, poor and hungry, but sustained by unwavering faith.”

Haridwar, India, 1998

I  will be leading an expedition to the Kumbh Mela Festival from March 4 – 16, 2009.  The main attraction of this workshop and expedition is the Kumbh Mela festival.   We will be focusing on the images that participants take every day and I will help participants to put together a Mela portfolio. Over the course of the days in Haridwar we will witness the auspicious bathing day where people will travel from all over India via trains, buses and road to bathe in the Ganges.   This trip is almost sold out.  For information please contact hillary@stevemccurry.com.

Allahabad, 2001

The Mela will be filled with all sorts of interesting characters: Sadhus, naked Babas who use the sky as their garment, animated beggars, street performers, people from every caste and sub caste of India. Old and young people all attend, and some very old people attend who are hoping to die while they attend the Mela so they can be cremated right there on the Ganges.

Ujjain, India

Steve McCurry and Sadhu in Allahabad, 2001

Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 1979

I traveled with  the Afghan Mujahadeen in 1979, who were determined to resist and undermine the Marxist puppet central government.  This was before the Soviets invaded.

We  traveled as much as thirty miles a night subsisting on tea and bread with an occasional bonus of goat cheese or yogurt.  The only drinking water was what we scooped out of an irrigation ditch.

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These are the proud men of Kunar Province girding for war in a place where ancient absolutes still prevail.
Adapted from Owen Edwards in American Photographer magazine, 1980.

Steve McCurry and Commander Abdul Raluf

Abdul Raluf, standing to my left, was the commander of the Asmir Garrison in Afghanistan’s Kunar province.  In September 1979, Commander Raluf and his 300 soldiers at a strategic outpost on the border with Pakistan, switched sides, killing the provincial governor, stripping the garrison of weapons and supplies, and joined forces with the Mujahideen. It took another ten years for the Afghan government to fall.