Part II 

Fisherman on Inle Lake, Myanmar/Burma

 

Afghanistan

 

The sea’s our field of harvest,
Its scaly tribes our grain;
We’ll reap the teeming waters
As at home they reap the plain.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

 

Pago, Myanmar/Burma

 

Barley Fields, Kandze, Tibet

 

Rice paddies, Tibet

 

 

Tawi-Tawi, Philippines 

 

 

Goa, Western India

 

 

Cultivating Potatoes, Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

 
Weligama, Sri Lanka

 

It is estimated that 20% of the world’s population depend upon fish for their survival.

 

Half of the world depends on rice.
 

 

 

Myanmar/Burma 

 

 

 

 

Sri Lanka 

 

 

Yemen

India

Cambodia

Japan

Mali

Philippines

Sri Lanka

Dal Lake, Srinigar, Kashmir

Burma/Myanmar

In 40 years, the global population is expected to swell by
2 billion, so rice, today the fastest growing staple which
feeds more than half the world’s population, will become
increasingly important to global food security.
- Pamela Whitby, BBC, The Race for Rice, 2011

Rice paddy fields, Banaue, Philippines

 Nepal 

Rice paddies, Thailand

Rice has fed more people over a longer period of time
than has any other crop in human history.
Rice: Then and Now”
by R.E. Huke and E.H. Huke

Java, Indonesia
Woman working in a field devastated by volcanic debris and flood waters

Farmer, Baluchistan, Pakistan

Nepal

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
who sows a field, or trains a flower,
or plants a tree, is more than all.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

 
Niger 

 
Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.
They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the
most virtuous, and they are tied to their country
and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.
- Thomas Jefferson

 Pakistan

 Luzon, Philippines  

 Shibam, Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen

Afghanistan

 Lancaster, Pennsylvania

The Amish farm as they have for hundreds
of years.  They believe that working with the soil,
raising livestock, and growing their own food is
cooperating with God’s purposes.

  The bounty of harvests in Kashmir

Agra, India 

 
Niger

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 We invite you to take a look at our redesigned website at:
http://www.stevemccurry.com

 Weligama, Sri Lanka

Myanmar/Burma 

Sri Lanka 

Yemen

India

The sea’s our field of harvest,
Its scaly tribes our grain;
We’ll reap the teeming waters
As at home they reap the plain.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

Cambodia

Japan

Mali

Philippines

Sri Lanka

Dal Lake, Srinigar, Kashmir

Burma/Myanmar

In 40 years, the global population is expected to swell by
2 billion, so rice, today the fastest growing staple which
feeds more than half the world’s population, will become
increasingly important to global food security.
- Pamela Whitby, BBC, The Race for Rice, 2011

Rice paddy fields, Banaue, Philippines

Phokhara, Nepal 

Rice paddies, Thailand

Rice has fed more people over a longer period of time
than has any other crop in human history.
Rice: Then and Now”
by R.E. Huke and E.H. Huke

Java, Indonesia
Woman working in a field devastated by volcanic debris and flood waters

Farmer, Baluchistan, Pakistan

Nepal

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
who sows a field, or trains a flower,
or plants a tree, is more than all.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

 Niger 

 Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.
They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the
most virtuous, and they are tied to their country
and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.
- Thomas Jefferson

 Pakistan

 Luzon, Philippines  

 Shibam, Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen

Afghanistan

 Lancaster, Pennsylvania

The Amish farm as they have for hundreds
of years.  They believe that working with the soil,
raising livestock, and growing their own food is
cooperating with God’s purposes.

  The bounty of harvests in Kashmir

Agra, India 

 Niger

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 We invite you to take a look at our redesigned website at:
http://www.stevemccurry.com

The tree is a slow, enduring force straining to win the sky.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands,
translated from French by Stuart Gilbert

Chinar Trees, Kashmir

If you would know strength and patience,
welcome the company of trees. 
- Hal Borland

Ayutthaya, Thailand

Cambodia

I hear the wind among the trees
Playing the celestial symphonies;
I see the branches downward bent,
Like keys of some great instrument.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

India

Thailand

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky
- Khalil Gibran

 India

Every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of
gold and silver.
- Martin Luther

France

Agra, India

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the
listening heaven. 
- Rabindranath Tagore,
Fireflies, 1928

 Cambodia

Trees are much like human beings and
enjoy each other’s company.
- Jens Jensen, Siftings, 1939

Canada

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a
claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something,
that quality of air that emanation from old trees,
that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
-  Robert Louis Stevenson

Korea

Niger

I never saw a discontented tree.
They grip the ground as though they liked it, and
though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.
They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind,
going and coming like ourselves,
traveling with us around the
sun two million miles a day,
and through space heaven knows how
fast and far!
-  John Muir

Grand Canyon, Arizona

And see the peaceful trees extend
their myriad leaves in leisured dance
they bear the weight of sky and cloud
upon the fountain of their veins
- Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems

The Sahel

Nepal

  Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing in time to come.
How do we know? They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee that singing will ever be.
- Wendell Berry

Thailand

Cambodia

Believe one who knows
You will find something greater in woods than books.
Trees and stones will teach you
that which you can never learn from masters
- Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)  

Lhasa, Tibet 

Every wrinkle is but a notch in the
quiet calendar of a well-spent life. 
-  Charles Dickens

 Croatia

France

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. 
-  Frank Lloyd Wright

Tibet

It takes a long time to become young.
-  Pablo Picasso

Myanmar/Burma

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
- Garson Kanin

Afghanistan

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different,
are not less than the pleasures of youth.
- W. Somerset Maugham

Paraguay

Preah Khan, Cambodia 

Warning

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth…
- Jenny Joseph

Cuba

Those who love deeply never grow old;
they may die of old age, but they die young.
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Tibet

The answer to old age is to keep one’s mind busy
and to go on with one’s life as if it were interminable.
I always admired Chekhov for building a new house when he was
dying of tuberculosis.
- Leon Edel

 Shanghai, China

 When we’re young we have faith in what is seen,
but when we’re old we know that what is seen is traced in air and built on water.
– Maxwell Anderson

  Brazil

Vrindivan, India

The great secret that all old people share is that you really
haven’t changed in 70 or 80 years. 
Your body changes, but you don’t change at all.
- Doris Lessing

Afghan refugee, Pakistan

Porbandar, Gujarat, India

Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom.
-Plato

 Macedonia

Yemen

A man’s age is something impressive, it sums up his life: 
maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and
despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed
through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. 
A man’s age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories. 
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944, translated from French by Norah Purcell 

Rajasthan, India

Pakistan

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries
for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who
have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably
enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. 

With such people the grey head is but the impression of the
old fellow’s hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but
a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.
-  Charles Dickens

Shanghai, China 

Please visit our new website:  http://www.stevemccurry.com

 The poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend.
- Lord Byron

Johannesburg, South Africa

Dogs are our link to paradise.
They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be
back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring.
It was peace.
- Milan Kundera

Ireland

Kham, Eastern Tibet

Varanasi, India

The dog … is the god of frolic.
- Henry Ward Beecher

Angkor, Cambodia

New Delhi, India

Kabul, Afghanistan

With eye upraised his master’s look to scan,
The joy, the solace, and the aid of man:
The rich man’s guardian and the poor man’s friend,
The only creature faithful to the end.
- George Crabbe

Porbandar, India

The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth will ever be.
- Konrad Lorenz

Bagan, Burma

Rome, Italy

I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who
returned home after being absent for more than twenty years
and was recognized only by his dog.
- Guillermo C. Infante

Marseille, France

Vietnam

India

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have
known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
- James Thurber

 Texas, USA

Histories are more full of the examples
of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
- Alexander Pope

India

Bhutan

Jaipur, India

All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers,
is contained in the dog.
Franz Kafka, Investigations of the Dog

Near Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka 

 Rome, Italy

California, USA

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in
this selfish world, the one that never deserts him,
the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.
- George Graham

 Paraguay

If you think you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.
-  Cowboy Wisdom

Gruffy, our family dog, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania

We invite you to visit our new website:  http://www.stevemccurry.com

My exhibition in Rome at the Museum of Contemporary Art opened December 3, 2011, and will run through April 29, 2012.   
As part of the exhibition,  I was commissioned to photograph locations all over Italy. 

Here are a few of those pictures:

Venice, Italy

 There is no more magnificent absurdity than Venice. To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself,
but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.
- Alexander Herzen

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
- Denis Diderot

Sicily, Italy

Vatican City, Rome, Italy

When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
― Rumi

Sicily, Italy

 Rome, Italy

Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
-  Georg Wilhelm

Sicily, Italy

Sicily, Italy

 Rome, Italy

Whether you say Gioia di Vivere in Italian, or Joie de Vivre in French, or other expressions which
attempt to capture a passion for life,   you know the difficulty
of expressing the intangible in words.  I hope these pictures reflect the vibrant joy of life in Italy.

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
― Mark Twain

Rome, Italy

My mind to me a kingdom is,
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss.
-  Sir Edward Dyer

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
- John Keats

Venice, Italy

Nothing in the world that you ever heard of Venice, is equal to the
magnificent and stupendous reality.
- Charles Dickens

Selected Media Coverage

http://www.vogue.it/en/people-are-talking-about/art-photo-design/2011/12/steve-mccurry

http://www.video.mediaset.it/video/tg5/tg5_la_lettura/265739/steve-mccurry.html

We invite you to take a look at our new website: 

http://www.stevemccurry.com

Venice, Italy

Venice, Italy

You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
-  Giuseppe Verdi 

Rome, Italy

Open my heart and you will see,
Graved inside of it, “Italy.”
-  Robert Browning 

Sicily, Italy

Gubbio, Italy

Perugia, Italy

Venice, Italy 

Camino, Italy

In Italy
by
Derek Walcott
Published in the New Yorker Magazine

Roads shouldered by enclosing walls with narrow
cobbled tracks for streets, those hill towns with their
stamp-sized squares and a sea pinned by the arrow
of a quivering horizon, with names that never wither
for centuries and shadows that are the dial of time. Light
older than wine and a cloud like a tablecloth
spread for lunch under the leaves …
April 21, 2008

Camino, Italy

Sicily, Italy

 MACRO Testaccio Pelanda
Piazza Orazio Giustiniani 4
ROME

December 3, 2011 – April 29, 2012

EXHIBITION WEBSITE: 
http://www.stevemccurryroma.it/allestimento.php?lang=eng 

Venice, Italy

If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country [Italy] its music.
This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism .
- Thomas Jefferson

Spoleto, Perugia

Italy is a dream that keeps returning
for the rest of your life.
- Anna Akhmatova

We invite you to look at our new website:  http://www.stevemccurry.com

Some Media coverage of the Rome Exhibition:

http://www.vogue.it/en/people-are-talking-about/art-photo-design/2011/12/steve-mccurry

http://www.video.mediaset.it/video/tg5/tg5_la_lettura/265739/steve-mccurry.html

1979, 1980

Nuristan, Afghanistan

I slipped into Afghanistan across the border with Pakistan in 1979.  I went with a couple of guides who did not speak English.
I certainly didn’t speak Dari or Pashto so our only form of communication was improvised sign language.
I was woefully unprepared. Among my belongings were a plastic cup, a Swiss Army knife, two camera bodies, four lenses,
a bag of film and a few bags of airline peanuts.

A photograph I made of a helicopter that had been sabotaged by the Mujahadeen. 
This was near an army garrison which had defected en masse. New York Times, December 27, 1979

Two government collaborators executed by Mujahadeen near Jalalabad

 My naiveté was breathtaking, yet my Afghan guides protected me and treated me as their guest.
It was my first experience with the legendary Afghan hospitality.

  Fathers and sons fought side by side

Evening Prayers 

 Planting land mines in Logar Province to thwart the government troops’ advance

 Young boy joins guerilla movement in Nuristan

 Praying along the Kunar River

I went back when the Russians invaded.
I traveled with many different mujahadeen and militia groups.
We mainly traveled at night to avoid being spotted by the Soviet helicopters.
Most of the time we walked, but a few times we were able to borrow horses.

 Mujahadeen mourn loss of their brother-in-arms

I was always astonished at the continual pipeline of weapons and supplies going into Afghanistan from Pakistan around the clock.
Rockets, mortar rounds, ammunition, were carried in by camels, donkeys, and fighters.
It was only later that we found out the staggering amount of money supplied by the U.S. to make it happen.

When I went back over the border into Pakistan, I had blisters, saddle sores, and filthy clothing into which I had sewn rolls of film,
which were among the first images of the conflict.

 Fighters carry a disassembled Russian anti-aircraft gun to move it to a
position overlooking the valley

   I visited a government garrison at Asmar District, Kunar Province,  where three hundred soldiers defected to the Mujahadeen.
 New York Times, December 29, 1979

Christian Science Monitor, January, 1980

TIME Magazine, April, 1980
I took these pictures in Nangahar Province.
My coverage over several trips for TIME, was the basis for
winning the Robert Capa Gold Medal award.

 Strategy session in Kunar Province

Stern Magazine, 1980
Mujahadeen using goat skins to cross rivers

International Herald Tribune, 1980

Commanders meet with tribal elders in Nangahar Province

Paris Match, 1980.
I made this photograph of government soldiers in Kunar Province.

 Men used weapons from swords and axes to ancient guns and rocket propelled grenades

Over the years, I went back more than dozens of times on assignment for National Geographic, Time Magazine, ABC News,
and other news outlets.  I have spent time in Afghanistan during invasions, retreats, truces, and relative peace.
Almost every time I returned, the power centers had shifted. In a great game of musical chairs, elders, warlords, criminals, and
mullahs’ power grows and diminishes as predictably as the phases of the moon.

 Many families left their destroyed villages to live with relatives
in other regions of the country

Nari District, Kunar Province

As much as outsiders have tried to “re-form” the country in their own
image, Afghanistan  has been able to absorb the blows of superpowers, and
remain essentially the same.

The interesting thing  is that the people trying to change it,  change more than the country
does even after Herculean efforts of  governments, NGO’s, and coalitions.

 This village was destroyed by government forces in the Spring of 1979 because they had
given refuge to Mujahadeen.

The viciousness of the Soviet attacks forced millions to flee their homes for Pakistan and Iran, and
contributed to what the Afghanistan scholar, Louis Dupree, called “Migratory Genocide.”
By 1986, five million Afghans had left their country.

Forty-six percent of all casualties were caused by bombings from airplanes or helicopters.

We invite you to see this blog on our new website:  http://www.stevemccurry.com

Wodaabe Tribe, Niger

Laughter is by definition healthy.
- Doris Lessing,  Nobel Laureate in Literature

La Fortuna, Honduras

Shanghai Circus, Shanghai, China

Moscow, Russia

Perugia, Italy

If music be the food of love, play on.
- William Shakespeare

Havana, Cuba

India

Rajasthan, India

Lucknow, India

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called games.
- W. H. Auden

Bekaa Valley, Lebanon

 Mersin, Turkey

Could we look into the head of a Chess player,
we should see there a whole world of feelings,
images, ideas, emotion and passion.
- Alfred Binet

Jodhpur, India

 Peru

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Some people believe football is a matter of
 life and death.
I’m very disappointed with that attitude.
I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.
- Bill Shankly, English soccer manager.

Maningrida, Australia

Tibet

 Young Shepherd during Holi, Rajasthan, India

We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
- Immanual Kant

Istanbul, Turkey

Until one has loved an animal,
a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.
- Anatole France

 Mumbai/Bombay, India

Buzkashi, Kabul, Afghanistan

Yangon, Myanmar/Burma

They say golf is like life, but don’t believe them.
Golf is more complicated than that.
- Gardner Dickinson

Bangladesh 

 
 Yemen

You must invent your own games and
teach us old ones how to play.
- Nikki Giovanni

Burma/Myanmar

Burma/Myanmar

Street Performers, Mumbai, India

Varanasi, India

  Tibet

 Lhasa, Tibet

Play is a uniquely adaptive act,
not subordinate to some other adaptive
act, but with a special function of its own
in human experience.
- Johan Huizinga

Pul i Khumri, Afghanistan

 Wrestling Match, Kahan, Afghanistan

Los Angeles, California

Games lubricate the body and the mind.
-Benjamin Franklin

Nova Scotia, Canada

Play is the exultation of the possible.
- Martin Buber

Kabul, Afghanistan

 Bangladesh

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the
seriousness of a child at play.
- Heraclitus

Mumbai, India

 China

It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use,
from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.
- Thomas Aquinas

 Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Myanmar/Burma

Rajasthan, India

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