Grief, Grind, and Glory of Work

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.

Burma

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

Labor disgraces no man;
unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.  
- Ulysses S. Grant

Yemen

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.  

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

Shoe repair shop in India

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

Burma

India

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

Candy Factory, Kabul, Afghanistan

Mumbai, India

Gujarat, India

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

Miners 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

MKS Steelworks, Serbia

Japan

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.

Landi Kotal, Pakistan

Bakery run by Afghan widows, Kabul, Afghanistan

Croatia

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.

India

           Mumbai, India

Sugar cane farmer, Philippines

Everything yields to diligence.
- Thomas Jefferson

Drying 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.

Flower Seller, Dal Lake, Kashmir

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Going Home

Home is where one starts from. 
- T.S. Eliot

Rajasthan, India

The ache for home lives in all of us…
- Maya Angelou

Omo Valley, Ethiopia

My home is my retreat and resting place …
I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside,
as I do another corner in my soul.
- Michel de Montaigne

Cave Homes in Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Tibet

He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan 

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown.
It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter —
but the King of England cannot enter! — all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.
-William Pitt the Elder

India

All language is a longing for home.
- Jalaluddin Rumi, 13th-Century Persian poet

Russia

 Mali

Uganda

Peru

Mauritania

Home is any four walls that enclose the right person.
-Helen Rowland

 Tibet

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
- Benjamin Franklin

Kashmir

Tihamah Plain, Yemen

A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
- George Edward Moore

Refugees returning to destroyed homes, Herat, Afghanistan

Russia

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues,
the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained. 
- Winston Churchill

 Tanzania

Philippines

 Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.
- John Howard Payne

Afghanistan

Morocco

 My home is not a place; it is people.
- Lois McMaster Bujold

Bosnia

Brazil

Russia

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.
- Herman Melville

Omo Valley, Ethiopia

It takes a lot of living to make a house a home
It doesn’t make any  difference how rich you get to be
How much your chairs and tables cost, how great your luxury;
It isn’t home to you though it be the palace of a king,
Until somehow your soul is wrapped round everything.
- Paraphrase of Edgar Guest poem, Home

Upcoming Exhibitions
Plazzo Ducale, Genova, Italy – Opens October 17, 2012
http://www.stevemccurrygenova.it/
Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, California, United States – November 15, 2012
 Kunstmuseum-Wolfsburg, Germany – January 19, 2013
Kunsthalle Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland – June 1, 2013

Fun and Games

China

Brazil

Russia

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed
himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become
unstable without knowing it.
- Herodotus

Burma

The true object of all human life is play.
Earth is a task garden.
Heaven is a playground.
- G . K. Chesterton

Los Angeles, USA

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

Canada

You can discover more about a person in an
hour of play than in a year of conversation.
- Plato

Honduras

In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior.
In play it is as though he were a head taller than himself.
- Lev Vygotsky

India

People tend to forget that play is serious.
- David Hockney

Rajasthan, India

 

Burma

Mumbai, India

Play is the exultation of the possible.
- Martin Buber

Australia

A child loves to play not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

- B. Spock, M.D.

Burma

Lebanon

Bangladesh

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

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Umbria, Italy

Turkey

India

Elliott Erwitt, Magnum Photographer, in his studio, Central Park West, NYC, USA

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Afghanistan

 For information about our January 2013, Expedition to Burma, please see:
http://stevemccurry.com/expeditions/myanmar-expedition

Silhouettes and Shadows

Bodh Gaya, India

 The Sun never knew how wonderful it was
until it fell on the wall of a building.
Louis Kahn, Architect
quoted in forward of In Praise of Shadows,  Junichiro Tanizaki

Mud Mosque, Mali

Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain,
and see even here, upon a winter’s day,
how beautiful the shadows are.
  Alas!  It is the nature of their kind to be so.
The loveliest things in life are but shadows,
and they come and go, and change and fade away…
- Charles Dickens

Cambodia

Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows,
the light and dark which that thing provides.
- Junichiro Tanizaki

Kabul, Afghanistan

We are but dust and shadow.
- Horace

Preah Khan, Cambodia

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.
- J.R. R. Tolkien

Thailand

Burma/Myanmar

Mauritania

Brazil

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow.
- T. S. Eliot

Italy

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it.  The tree is the real thing.
- Abraham Lincoln

New York

Kandze, Tibet

Burma/Myanmar

Kabul, Afghanistan

China

Kashmir

Korea

Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

Ancient Catacombs, Rome, Italy

A shadow on the wall
boughs stirred by the noonday wind
that’s enough earth
and for the eye
enough celestial participation.
- Gottfried Benn
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

It Takes Two

 Here are some pictures of couples all over
the world who have a relationship that is
evident in their gestures of caring, their body
language, their eyes.

Mauritania

If we are a metaphor of the universe,
the human couple is the metaphor par excellence,
the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms.
The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
– Octavio Paz, Mexico, Nobel Laureate in Literature

Havana, Cuba

Brazil

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Venice, Italy

What is essential is invisible to the eye.
 - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Rome, Italy

Grow old along with me.
The best is yet to be, the last of life,
for which the first was made.
Our times are in his hand who saith,
A whole I planned, youth shows but half;
Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!
– Robert Browning

France

 

New York City

Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan

Life has taught us that love does not
consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward
together in the same direction.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
Wind, Sand, and Stars

Tagong, Tibet

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
– Robert Browning

Gostivar, Macedonia

 

Agra, India

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. 
- Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

Uganda

To love someone deeply gives you strength.
Being loved by someone  deeply gives you courage.
- Lao-Tzu

Sanaa, Yemen

 

Dublin, Ireland

 

Belgrade, Serbia

One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life.
That word is love.
– Sophocles

Rome, Italy

 

Istanbul, Turkey

Cambodia

 

Rome, Italy

The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
– Octavio Paz, Mexico, Nobel Laureate in Literature

Everybody Has a Story

Kabul, Afghanistan

Sidon, Lebanon

Six billion of us walking the planet, six billion smaller worlds
on the bigger one. 
Six billion stories, every one an epic, full of tragedy and triumph,
good and evil, despair and hope.
- Dean Koontz

Baalbek, Lebanon

People are hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being.
Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too.
It goes from one generation to another.
— Studs Terkel

Druze Elders, Lebanon

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by.
-Harvey Cox

Rajasthan, India

 

Scientists who study the brain tell us that we are
hardwired for storytelling and
understanding the world through stories and metaphors.

Père Lachaise Cemetery, France

 

Shalimar Bagh, Kashmir

 

If history were taught in the form of stories,
it would never be forgotten
 - Rudyard Kipling

Maimana, Afghanistan

 …Without a story you have not got a nation, or culture, or civilization.
Without a story of your own, you haven’t got a life of your own.
—Laurens Van der Post

Poet Khalil Khoury, Iraq

People did not wait until there was writing before they told stories and sang songs.
— Albert Bates Lord

Golden Temple, Amritsar, India

Near Al Hudaydah, Yemen

 

Texas, USA

Their story, yours and mine — it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and
we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.
— William Carlos Williams

Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, USA

Jimmy Swaggart, Louisiana

 

La Fortuna, Honduras

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
— Muriel Rukeyser

Rajasthan, India

Flechtingen, Germany

Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes Interview, Beverly Hills Hotel, USA

We are lonesome animals.
We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome.
One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say and to feel
‘Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.’
You’re not as alone as you thought.
— John Steinbeck

Brazil

 

I will tell you something about stories, (he said)
They aren’t just entertainment.
Don’t be fooled.
They are all we have, you see,
All we have to fight off
illness and death
- Leslie Marmon Silko

Pristina, Kosovo

Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan

To be a person is to have a story to tell.
—Isak Dinesen

Vrindavan, India

Story behind the picture

The woman in the picture has been a widow for seventy years.
Her husband died when she was 14 years old.
Living in a community of widows since that time, she has made a living as one commissioned to pray for others.
After I made her picture, she invited me to join her for tea.
She spends her days in prayer for people who give her a few rupees.
She lives joyfully, and shows no sign of sorrow, self-pity, or resentment.

E X H I B I T I O N S

CHRIS BEETLES FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHS
3-5 Swallow Street
London W1B 4DE
September 7 –October 15, 2011

PETER FETTERMAN GALLERY
2525 Michigan Ave #A1
Santa Monica, CA 90404
September 10 – December 1, 2011

 

OPEN SHUTTER GALLERY
735 Main Avenue
Durango, CO
September 9 – December 14, 2011

  

LAURA RATHE FINE ART

Houston, TX

September 17 – October 15, 2011

 

MACRO
Museum of Contemporary Art
Rome, Italy
December 1, 2011 – April 29, 2012

 

A Matter of Faith

 Girl praying at a mosque, Kabul,  Afghanistan

 

 I have seen many manifestations of  faith during my travels over the past three decades.  Some have been spontaneous, some have been part of a liturgy, some have been prescribed rituals, some have been in magnificent buildings, others have been outside under a tree.   Some people’s faith is embedded in the way they live their lives.

 

 

Shaolin monks training, Zhengzhou, China

 

“Just as the body cannot exist without blood, so the soul needs the matchless and pure strength of faith.”   Mohandas Gandhi

Prayers and teaching, Peshawar, Pakistan

 

 

 

 Sikh holiest site, Golden Temple,  Amritsar, India

 

 

 

 

Sri Lanka

 

 

 

Prayer Flags, Lhasa, Tibet

 

 

 

Charlotte, North Carolina

 

 

 Religious Instruction – Jewish child  in Yemen

 

 

 

Srinagar, Kashmir

 

 

 

Brazil

 

 

Camino, Italy

 

 

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.  To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”   

- St. Thomas Aquinas

 

 

India

 

 

Thrissur Pooram, Kerala, India

 

  “Faith is a bird that feels dawn breaking and sings while it is still dark.”

    - Rabindranath Tagore

 

                                                                       

Tibetan Prayer Festival in Bodh Gaya, India

 

 

Pilgrim praying with monks at the Buddhist Academy of Larung Gar, Kham Province, Tibet

 

“What is Faith?  When your good deed pleases you and your evil deed grieves you, you are a believer.”

- Prophet Muhammad

 

Monk at Jokhang temple, Lhasa, Tibet

 

Solitude – The Power of One

Barkhor Quarter, Lhasa, Tibet

 

Religious figures from Moses to  Jesus, Mohammed and the Buddha all found great value in solitude.

Old Kabul, Afghanistan

 

In this wired age of non-stop communication with little time for reflection and contemplation, many find it vital to carve out time in order to have time to be creative, innovative, and  imaginative.

Grand Canyon, Arizona, U.S.

 

Octavio Paz Mexican writer, poet, and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature said  “Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.”

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

Himalayan India

 

Howrah Station, Calcutta, India

 

Brazil

 

“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.”

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Moscow, Russia

 

Dal Lake, Vale of Kashmir

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone;  if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. ”  -  Arthur Schopenhauer

My pictures on people reading around the world will be featured at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 5.