Language of Looking

Please scroll to the bottom for the unseen portrait of the week. 

 There are many ways to describe the ways that people look at each other and the world.  We peek, stare, glance, gaze, gape, glare, and peer.  We also examine, contemplate, squint, and observe.

 

 

Jodhpur, India

 

 

 

Yangon, Myanmar/Burma

 

 

Berlin, Germany

 

 

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. 
 - Henry David Thoreau 

 

 

Croatia

 

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

 

 Afghanistan

 

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

 

Thirumullaivayil, India

 

 

One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily
symbol of identity. 
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

 

 

Train to Peshawar, Pakistan

 

 

Myanmar/Burma

 

 

 Paraguay

 

 

Barkhor Quarter, Lhasa, Tibet

 

 

It’s the way to educate your eyes.  Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.  Die knowing something.  You are not here long.
 - Walker Evans  

 

 

Reina Sofia, National Museum of Art, Madrid, Spain

 

 

If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the 1000th time,
you are in danger of seeing it for the first time.
-  G. K. Chesterton 

 

 

Jaipur, India

 

I used to try to figure out precisely what I was seeing all the time, until I discovered I didn’t need to.
If the thing is there, why, there it is.
- Walker Evans

 

 

A man examines photographs of victims of the Khmer Rouge’s S-21 prison camp, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

 

 

 Unseen Portrait of the WeekBaluchistan, Pakistan

Fathers

Honduras

Rajasthan, India

Cambodian refugees fleeing from the Khmer Rouge

La Esperanza, Colombia

“It is a wise father that knows his own child.” –  William Shakespeare

India

Helmand Province, Afghanistan

“A Man knows that he is growing old  because he begins to look like his father.”
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Wedding, Rajasthan, India

West Bengal, India

“I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection.”
- Sigmund Freud

Srinagar, Kashmir, India

“One father is more than a hundred Schoolmasters.”
- George Herbert

Paraguay

“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”
- Clarence Budington Kelland

Dedicated to my father, Eugene T. McCurry

Dith Pran – Out of the Killing Fields

I went to Cambodia in 1986, on an assignment given to me by Kathy Ryan of the New York Times Sunday magazine to photograph Dith Pran and Haing Ngor.

My assignment coincided with Diane Sawyer who was doing an ABC news piece on Dith Pran and Haing Ngor returning to Cambodia after filming the movie “The Kiling Fields.” It was the first time Pran had returned to his country, and it was still a bit dangerous because there were still Khmer Rouge in the countryside.

Pran grew up near Angkor Wat and as a young man had been a tour guide, when he met Sidney Schanberg, the New York Times reporter, whom he worked for as a translator and fixer.

Schanberg was eventually forced to leave the country, but while he won a Pulitzer for his coverage, Pran became a virtual slave of the Khmer Rouge in a death camp. Dith Pran watched the country descend into the hell known as the killing fields, but was able to survive from 1975 until 1979 during the time when a third of the population was killed. Pran later said, “Only the silent survived.”

Eventually Schanberg found Pran in a refugee camp and brought him back to New York and helped him to immigrate to the United States where Pran became a photographer for the New York Times.

Pran and I became friends after our time in Cambodia so after he retired from the New York Times, we returned to Siem Reap. It was moving to be with him as he returned to his country and revisited his family. While there, we visited nearby Angkor Wat. I was so struck at the magnificence of this temple complex, I planned to come back and photograph it as soon as I had the opportunity. Years later, I went back and photographed Angkor Wat on assignment for National Geographic.

Haing Ngor, who played Pran in the movie, “The Killing Fields,” won an Oscar for his role. Tragically, Ngor who was a doctor in real life, was murdered in Los Angeles during a robbery.