The Greatest Good

Niger

Music
The greatest good that mortals know
and all of heaven we have below.
- Joseph Addison

Yemen

Rocca Paolina, Perugia, Umbria, Italy 

Chitral, Pakistan

Karabash-i Veli,  Bursa, Turkey

Street Musician, Dublin, Ireland 

 Honduras

La Habana Vieja, Cuba

Music is the shorthand of emotion.
- Leo Tolstoy

A family plays music on the street hoping for a few rupees, India

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
- Berthold Auerbach

Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia

Two musicians practice for the Jazz Festival, Perugia, Italy

Music’s the medicine of the mind. 
- John A. Logan

 France

Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
- Leonard Bernstein

 Kashmir

Herbie Hancock, Italy
Winner of 14 Grammy Awards, Hancock is a musical icon.

 Kalash Girl, Chitral District of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan

 When words leave off, music begins.
- Heinrich Heine

Khan Murjan restaurant in a 14th century building which
served as an inn for travellers and traders.  Baghdad, Iraq

Whiskey a Go Go, a fixture on the Sunset Strip, Los Angeles, California, United States

Pianist waits to perform in a supper club, Shanghai, China

Alto Churumazu, Peru

 Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.
- Alphonse de Lamartine

Marrakesh, Morocco

Traditional performers,  Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies.
- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California

Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you,
music itself is not going to let you down.
- Virgil Thomson, Composer, Winner of the Pulitzer Price, 1949

Karabash-i Veli,  Bursa, Turkey

Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Seal  greets Steve McCurry at concert, PhotoKina,Cologne, Germany
Courtesy of Matthias Krug,  September 17, 2012

CURRENT AND FUTURE EXHIBITIONS

Oeksnehallen, Copenhagen, Denmark – Ongoing
Gallery N, Seoul Arts Centre, Seoul, South Korea – Opening on September 12th, 2012
Leica Photokina, Hall 1, Cologne, Germany – September 18, 2012
Centro Municipal de Arte Helio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – October 6th, 2012
Plazzo Ducale, Genova, Italy – October 17, 2012
Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles – November 15, 2012
Chris Beetles Gallery, London, U.K. – January 15, 2013
Kunstmuseum-Wolfsburg, Germany – January 19, 2013
Cavalier Gallery, Greenwich, CT – April 12 – May 6, 2013
Kunsthalle Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland – June 1, 2013

All Creatures Great and Small

Thailand

Burma/Myanmar

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all
-Cecil Frances, 1848

Thailand

Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant;
the only harmless great thing.
- John Donne

Tibet

 

India

India

 

Bangladesh

Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures;
none show more passionate tenderness to their
young when deprived of them; and, in short,
I am not ashamed to profess a deep
love for these quiet creatures.
-Thomas de Quincey

India

Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump;
you may be freeing him from being a camel.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton

Rajasthan, India

Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride,
Friendship without envy,
Or beauty without vanity?
Here, where grace is served with muscle
And strength by gentleness confined
He serves without servility; he has fought without enmity.
There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent.
There is nothing so quick, nothing more patient.
~Ronald Duncan, The Horse

Paraguay

 

Konigslutter, Germany

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

Tibet

 

Band-e-Amir, Afghanistan

 A horse is worth more than riches.
- Spanish Proverb

Yemen

Without a shepherd, sheep are not a flock.
-Russian Proverb

Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan

All goats are mischievous thieves, gate-crashers,
and trespassers. Also they possess individual
character, intelligence, and capacity for affection
which can only be matched by the dog.
–David Mackenzie, Farmer in the Western Isles

Tibet

 

West Bengal, India

 

Bosnia

 

India

Thailand

 

Burma/Myanmar

As an inspiration to the author,
I do not think the cat can be over-estimated.
He suggests so much grace, power, beauty, motion, mysticism.
I do not wonder that many writers love cats;
I am only surprised that all do not.
- Carl Van Vechten

Honduras

Peru

Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.
- James Herriot

Italy

A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes.
- Indian Proverb

Yangon, Burma/Myanmar

 

Cambodia

 

India

 

India

 

Moscow, Russia

 

Colombia

 

Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan

 

Russia

 

Burma/Myanmar

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be
judged by the way its animals are treated.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Please see the Behind the Scenes video about the Rome Exhibition:

http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/video/2012/february/07/behind-the-scenes-with-steve-mccurry/

More Fun and Games

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

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

Varanasi, India

Coming of Age

 All of living is a process of coming of age, of reconciling
the essence of the inner self with one’s outer being,with the world, and with
changing expectations for that self in the world.
- Kay E. Vandergrift

Rome, Italy

The teen and young adult years, when young people are perched precariously on the brink between childhood and
adult responsibilities, are, of course, when the coming of age process is most obvious.
- K.E.V.

Kabul, Afghanistan

Tanzania

Los Angeles, USA

The imagination of a boy is healthy,
and the mature imagination of a man is healthy;
but there is a space of life between,
in which the soul is in a ferment,
the character undecided, the way of life uncertain,
the ambition thick-sighted.
 -  John Keats

Havana, Cuba

So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying,
An intolerable waiting,
A longing for another place and time,
Another condition

- Theodore Roethke

Gubbio, Italy

Germany

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
- Abraham Lincoln

Kabul, Afghanistan

Budapest, Hungary

 

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect,
he becomes an adolescent;
the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult;
the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.
- Alden Nolan

Kabul, Afghanistan

Dublin, Ireland

We don’t stop playing because we grow old.
We grow old because we stop playing.
- George Bernard Shaw

Italy

Flechtingen, Germany

Zabid, Yemen

Germany

 

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh — at yourself.
- Ethel Barrymore

La Fortuna, Honduras

Honduras

 

Zagreb, Croatia

Young dancers are training at a very vulnerable time in their lives, through adolescence, and
while they are trying to work out who they are as people,  never mind as a dancer.
So train the whole person, not just the dancer.
- Deborah Bull

Tibet

Passage

Young man,
Young woman,
Life turns for you.
This is a magic time,
a mythic passage,
In your becoming
We who welcome you,
None of us is too old
So as to have forgotten
–the mystery of not
knowing,
–the delight of first
discovery,
–the impatience to hurry
what will come next
–the terrible wonderfulness
of the changes…
-Edward Searl

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

 

Where We Live

 

 Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
- Charles Dickens

 Yemen

 Home is where the heart is.
Pliny The Elder,  A.D. 23-79

Mali 

 Kashmir

Philippines

 The home should be the treasure chest of living.
- Le Corbusier

 Morocco

Mauritania

 Afghanistan

  

It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I’ve gone and come back, I’ll find it at home.
- Rumi, (Jalal Al-Din Rumi, 1207 – 1273)

 Tibet

 Tibet

 Tibet

 One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.
- Margaret Mead

 South Africa

Sri Lanka

 Philippines 

What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts
are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the
head and heart?
- Orison Swett Marden

Peru

La Fortuna, Honduras

Bring love into your home for this is where our
love for each other must start.
- Mother Teresa

 Nepal 

 Paraguay 

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

Afghanistan

My home…It is my retreat and resting place from wars,
I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest
outside, as I do another corner in my soul.
- Michel Eyquem De Montaigne, 1533 – 1592

 Philippines 

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

 Kashmir

 Pakistan

Every one of us needs a home. The world needs a home.
There are so many young people who are homeless.
They may have a building to live in, but they are homeless in their hearts.
That is why the most important practice
of our time is to give each person a home.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

 Ireland

 Italy

 

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home…

- John Howard Payne

U P C O M I N G   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 – 24, 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 – October 21, 2011

  

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

Lost in Thought

 

 

Bagan, Burma/Myanmar

 

 

 

 

 A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought.  There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor. 
- Victor Hugo

 

  

 

 

 

 Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

 

 

 Never be afraid to sit a while and think. 
- Lorraine Hansberry,  A Raisin in the Sun

 

 

 

 

 Varanasi, India

 

 

 

 

 

Afghanistan 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Cambodia

 

 

 

 

 Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen;

even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. 
-Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks, 1508

 

 

 

 

Canada 

 

 

 

 

New York City 

 

 

 

 

 

South Korea 

 

 

 

 

 

Uzbekistan 

 

 

 

 

 

United States

 

 

 

 

China

 

 

 

 

Honduras

 

 

 

 

Ahmed Shah Massoud, Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

 

 

 

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

 

 

 

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. 
- Voltaire

 

 

 

 

  Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

 

 

 

 

Jammu & Kashmir 

 

 

 

 

Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Guernica and the Evolution of Consciousness, Picasso

 

 

Grand Canyon, Arizona, United States

 

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again? 
Winnie the Pooh,  A.A. Milne

Brothers and Sisters

The relationship between and among siblings has been the subject of literature for millennia.  From Old Testament stories of Cain and Abel to Shakespeare’s plays, modern novels, folktales, proverbs, and poems, the topic of  brothers and sisters has been a universal theme, relevant because most people on the planet have siblings.

 

 

Amdo, Tibet

 

Van Dyck, Ruebens, Hals, Van Gogh and hundreds of other artists have painted portraits of young siblings, but the subjects were mainly children of affluent families.  The siblings I photograph are often poor children in third world countries who have to stick together to survive poverty, wars, abuse, and deprivation.

 

 

Cambodia

 

 

 

 

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

 

 

Morocco

 

 

Los Angeles

 

 

 

 

Indonesia

 

 

 

India

 

 

 

Philippines

 

 

 

Honduras

 

 

 

Afghanistan

 

 

 

India

 

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

 

Mizoram, India

 

 

Bombay, India

 

 

Bhutan

 

 

Afghanistan

 

 

“Sibling relationships …  flourish in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance, warmth, loyalty and distrust.”  ~ Erica E. Goode, The Secret World of Siblings

 

 

My siblings

Family Love: Oil, Cement, Music

“In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.” - Eva Burrows

Macedonia

Mizoram, India

Kham, Tibet

“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
- Leo Tolstoy

Yanesha, Peru

Yanesha, Peru

“Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future. We make discoveries about ourselves.” -Gail Lumet Buckley

Northern Pakistan

La Fortuna, Honduras

Croatia

Thailand

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

“There’s no vocabulary for love within a family, love that’s lived in but not looked at, love within the light of which all else is seen, the love within which all other love finds speech. This love is silent.” - T. S. Eliot

Cambodia

Tibet

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Family, Nature’s Masterpiece

Tagong, Tibet

Families return to Herat, Afghanistan

Burma/Myanmar

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”
-Jane Howard

Viet Tri City, Vietnam

Tihamah Plain, Yemen

“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.” - George Santayana

Honduras

Jodhpur, India

Shanghai, China

Maimana, Afghanistan

Tiguent, Mauritania

Macedonia

Cambodian refugees in Thailand

Porbandar, Gujarat

“The family is the nucleus of civilization.” -  William Durant