Family and Friends

Tibet

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you,
but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach,
because you do not just live in a world.
A world lives in you.
- Frederick Buechner

India

 

India

Words are easy, like the wind;
Faithful friends are hard to find.
- William Shakespeare

Yemen

 

Afghanistan

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
- George Bernard Shaw

Vietnam

Nor need we power or splendor, wide hall or lordly dome;
the good, the true, the tender- these form the wealth of home.
- Sarah J. Hale (1788- 1879)

Baluchistan, Pakistan

 

Italy

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.
-Mencius, Chinese philosopher, 4th cent. BCE

Karelia, Russia

An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship.
- Spanish Proverb

Peru

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

Honduras

What can you do to promote world peace?
Go home and love your family.
- Mother Teresa

Tibet

 

India

There is only one good-looking child in the world, and every mother has it.
- Chinese Proverb

Afghanistan

The two things we can give our children are roots which firmly anchor them,
and wings which allow them to become independent.

Yemen

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.
I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.
 - Jane Austen

Paris, France

A true friend freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly,
takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably.
- William Penn

Fiji

 

Yemen

 

New York, United States

 

India

Interview with Scott Schuman for the Sartorialist blog:
http://www.thesartorialist.com/photos/the-mccurry-interview-part-1/

 

PROCEEDS FROM APP SALES GO TO OUR CHARITY, ImagineAsia.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/portraits-by-steve-mccurry/id589821521?mt=8

Food for the Soul

Conversation is food for the soul.
- Mexican Proverb

Omo Valley, Ethiopia

 The great secret of succeeding in conversation is to admire little, to hear much;
always to distrust our own reason, and sometimes that of our friends;
never to pretend to wit, but to make that of others appear as much as possibly we can;
to hearken to what is said and to answer to the purpose.
- Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790

Yemen

The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense,
the third good humor, and the fourth wit.
- Sir William Temple, 1628-1699

Tanzania

The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another’s observation, not overturning it.
- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton, 1803 – 1873

Morocco

The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others.
- Jean de la Bruyere, 1803 – 1873

Italy

 The character of a man is known from his conversations.
- Menander, 342 – 292 BCE

Poet Khalil Khoury, Baghdad, Iraq

 

Japan

 

India

Conversation. What is it? A Mystery!
It’s the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest,
of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.
- Guy de Maupassant, 1850 – 1893

Lourdes, France

 

China

The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.
-  Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection, 1533 – 1592

Turkey

 

Russia

 

France

 

Afghanistan

A single conversation with a wise person is worth a month’s study of books.
- Chinese Proverb

Italy

India

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Tanzania

In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is in conversation.
I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose,
I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice.
- Michel de Montaigne

Tibet

The very act of preparing and serving tea encourages conversation.
The little spaces in time created by teatime rituals call out to be filled with conversation.
Even the tea itself–warm and comforting-inspires a feeling of relaxation and trust that fosters shared confidences.
Emilie Barnes, If Teacups Could Talk

Italy

The highest good is prayer and conversation with God.
- St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, 347–407

Paraguay

 

Steve McCurry in Omo Valley with men from Surma Tribe

 

PLEASE VISIT
http://www.imagine-asia.org

Simple Act of Waiting

Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.
-Khaled Hosseini,  A Thousand Splendid Suns 

Tibet

Often the act of waiting is anything but simple.
Many people hate to wait because they are waiting to do something,
get something, or go somewhere.

Tibet

Waiting doesn’t seem like an act, but the lack of action;  however,
the decision to be patient and willing to wait is an act of courage and perseverance.

Crowds at the Kumbh Mela await their turn to bathe in the Ganges.  Allahabad, India

A person who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
- George Savile

Waiting for medical care. Kabul, Afghanistan

A mother waits for news of her missing son.  Afghanistan

Refugees wait in line.  Thailand

Endurance is patience concentrated.
- Thomas Carlyle

Women queue in Yemen

 Patience is the companion of wisdom.
- St. Augustine

A ballerina waits backstage for her cue. Zagreb, Croatia

Shoppers wait for a bus. Dublin, Ireland

The faithful wait for healing. Lourdes, France 

Waiting in line for a church service. Los Angeles, USA 

Waiting for the train.  India

Waiting for a bus. Ahmedabad, India

Waiting for a look through the Berlin Wall.  Germany

Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.
- Virgil

Waiting to perform. Hong Kong, China

People count up the faults of those who keep them waiting.
- French Proverb

Waiting for customers at Amber Fort, Jaipur, India

Dog waits for door to open. Porbandar, India

The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider
… I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.

Cambodia

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

Sentinels of the Earth

 

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)  

Morocco

Cambodia

Dust Storm, Rajasthan, India

A few minutes ago every tree was excited,
bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling,
tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm
like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent,
their songs never cease.
Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life,
every fiber thrilling like  harp strings, while incense is ever flowing
from the balsam bells and leaves.
No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples…
- John Muir

Italy

Trees, proud standing people
stretching fingertips to the sky, reaching, praying
glorious attention, breathing light.
strength
shelter
timeless confidence
bending and firm
comforting
rooted chorus line
dancing with the moon, the wind, the clouds
framing bursts of stars
tender rugged celebration
absorbing and releasing life
each holy branch holding
the power of the Universe.
There.
-  Wallace Stevens  

  

The Firmest Friend

 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

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

 

Between Darkness and Light

 

 

 Kampala, Uganda

 

 

 Shadows:  The places between darkness and light

 

 

Cambodia

 

 

“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 lovliest things in life are but shadows, and they come and go, and change and fade away…”
- Charles Dickens 

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

  

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Afghanistan

 

 

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

 

 

Cambodia

 

 

 

Bodh Gaya, India

 

 

 

 

Girl peeks out a train window, India

 

 

 

Mud Mosque, Mali

 

 

 

After the earthquake and tsunami, Japan, 2011 

 

 

 

Philippines

 

 

Vietnam

 

 

Vietnam

 

 

Croatia

 

 

 

Grand Central Terminal, New York

 

 

 

Train Station, Old Delhi, India 

 

 

 ”The Sun never knew how wonderful it was until it fell on the wall of a building.”

Louis Kahn, Architect
quoted in the forward of  the book,
In Praise of Shadows,  Junichiro Tanizaki

 

 

 

Cambodia

 

 

  Marseilles, France

 

 

Jalalabad, Afghanistan 

 

 

Unpublished, Unseen 4

Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2011

 

Over the past thirty years, I have taken nearly a million 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.

 

Myanmar/Burma, 2011

 

 Burma, 2011

 

 

Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2011

 

  

Tokyo, Japan, 2008

 

 

Day of Ashura, Afghanistan

 

 

France, 1989

 

Madrid, 1995

 

 

Rajasthan, India, 2010

 

 

Myanmar/Burma, 2011

 

 

Myanmar/Burma

 

 

Mumbai/Bombay, 2011

 

 

India

 

 

Chiang Mai, Thailand

 

 

Myanmar/Burma

 

 

India

 

Over the years I’ve come to see  that all of us are basically the same.  There are many more similarities that bind us than differences that separate us.

 

 

Yangon, Myanmar/Burma

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Power of Two

I have always been interested in the ways that people around the world share things in common.  All of those things remind us of what the human condition is really about.  In the blogs that I wrote about reading, we saw that there is a strong connection between people and their books which is the same in Yemen as it is in China as it is in France as it is in Thailand as any other place on the planet.  The relationship between people and their books goes all the way back to the invention of the printing press.

The subject of this blog goes back millennia.  Here are some pictures of couples who have a relationship that is evident in their gestures of caring, their body language, in their eyes.

Thai Nguyen Province, Vietnam

Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan

Tagong, Kham, Tibet

Gostivar, Macedonia

Agra, India

Nouakchott, Mauritania

Lourdes, France

Kampala, Uganda

Sanaa, Yemen

After the ball, Dublin, Ireland

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Belgrade, Serbia