To Fly

To read is to fly:
it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view
over  wide terrains of history,
human variety, ideas, shared experience and the
fruits of many inquiries.
- A. C. Grayling

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991

Books are the plane, and the train, and the road.
They are the destination, and the journey.
They are home.
- Anna Quindlen

Germany

India 

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something,
learned something, become a better person.
Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on…
Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.
- Nora Ephron

India

Everywhere I go in the world, I see young and old, rich and poor, reading books.  
Whether readers are engaged in the sacred or the secular, they are, for a time,
transported to  another world.

Thailand

India

Reading a good book is a universal activity, and people read while they do
just about everything else, and that includes reading while playing the
piano, which my sister used to do.

Sri Lanka

At one magical instant in your early childhood,
the page of a book–that string of confused, alien ciphers–shivered into meaning.
Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened.
You became, irrevocably, a reader.
- Alberto Manguel

Burma

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly,
into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.
- Joyce Carol Oates

Lourdes, France

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends;
they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the
most patient of teachers. 
- Charles William Eliot

Italy

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.
- James Russell Lowell

India

We read to know we are not alone. 
- C.S. Lewis

Tibet

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
- Jorge Luis Borges

China

Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still,
retreat or fly into the future.
- Jim Bishop

Thailand

That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book,
and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will
lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive
- all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

India

Kashmir

Korea

We live for books.
-Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose 

Canada

Turkey

Afghanistan

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
- Victor Hugo

Italy 

Yemen

I’m old-fashioned and think that reading books is the
most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.
- Wisława Szymborska
1996 Nobel Prize in Literature

India

Cuba

Japan

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
- Rene Descartes

Right as Rain

During the year I shot the monsoon assignment, I learned to see it as a critically important event, 
and not the disaster it had first seemed to my Western eyes.
Farmers experience the monsoon as an almost religious experience
as they watch their fields come back to life after being parched for half the year.

Varanasi, India 

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s annual monsoon rains have arrived at the southern Kerala coast,
a top weather official said on Tuesday, brightening prospects of higher farm output by aiding
farmers to plant summer-sown crops such as rice, soybean and cotton on time.
- June 6, 2012

Goa, India

Rain is grace;
Rain is the sky descending to the earth …
– John Updike

India

For half the world’s people, good monsoons, those rain-bearing winds of
Asia and the Subcontinent,  mean life and prosperity.
Poor ones are marked by famine and death.

Bangladesh

The rains fall on one horn of the buffalo, and not on the other.
-Indian Proverb

Kabul, Afghanistan

Java, Indonesia

Nepal

Northern Territory, Australia

Tokyo, Japan

Tibet

It is no use to grumble and complain; It’s just as cheap and easy to rejoice.
When God sorts out the weather and sends rain – Why, rain’s my choice.
- James Whitcomb Riley

Sri Lanka

Indonesia

Cambodia

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.
- Lucretius

Porbandar, India

India

Dalit women cleaning streets, Mumbai, India

Burma

Only He shakes the heavens and from its treasures takes out the winds.
He joins the waters and the clouds and produces the rain. He does all those things.
- Michael Servetus (1511-1553)
Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer

Cambodia

Monsoon History
Shirley Geok-lin Lim
The air is wet, soaks
into mattresses, and curls
In apparitions of smoke,
Like fat white slugs furled
Among the timber
Or silver fish tunnelling
The damp linen covers
Of schoolbooks, or walking
Quietly like centipedes,
The air walking everywhere
On its hundred feet
Is filled with the glare
Of tropical water.
Again we are taken over
By clouds and rolling darkness.
Small snails appear
Clashing their timid horns
Among the morning glory
Vines.

Bojonegoro, Java, Indonesia

Monsoon Festival, India

For months there is no rain, and then there is too much.
Half the world’s people survive at the whim of the monsoon.

Two men try to cross a monsoon swollen river after the bridge was swept away, Goa, India

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

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

 

The Power of Nature

 Please scroll to the bottom for the UnpublishedPortrait of the Week

 

 

Japan

 

 

Japan

 

The word tsunami comes from two Japanese words: tsu, which means harbor, and nami, which means wave.

 

 Japan

 

 

Japan

 

 

 In March  2011, Japan suffered from one of most violent earthquakes in history.  

 

 

Japan

 

 

 Its coastline shifted by as much thirteen feet to the east.

 

 

Japan

 

 The tsunami spawned by the earthquake destroyed virtually everything in its wake.

 

 

Japan

 

 

Duckweed carpets the water in a girl’s front yard at Bojonegoro, Java, Indonesia

 

 

Covering the monsoons  entailed day after day wallowing in filthy
water up to my chest, or standing in the street in a torrential downpour, my shoulder aching from the umbrella
propped in my armpit, and an impatient assistant wishing he were somewhere else.

 

 

Porbandar, Gujarat, India

 

I spent four days, in the flooded city of Gujarat, India, wading around the streets in waist-deep water that was filled with
bloated animal carcasses and other waste material.

 

 

Porbandar, Gujarat, India

 

The fetid water enveloped me leaving a greasy film over my
clothes and body.  Every night I returned to my flooded hotel,
empty except for a nightwatchman, and bathed my shriveled feet in disinfectant.

 

 

Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi, India

 

 

 

Goa, India

 

 

 Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans in August  2005,  was one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. 
Almost two thousand people died in the hurricane and the flood which followed.

 

 

New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

 

 

 

New Orleans, United States

 

 

New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

 

 

New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

 

 

On December 26, 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami killed over 230,000 people in fourteen countries.

 

  Four days after the tsunami hit Sri Lanka’s coastline
A man prays for the victims 

 

UNSEEN / UNPUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK

 Texas, United States 

Please visit Steve’s main site:  http://www.stevemccurry.com

 

Travelers’ Tales

 Agra, India

 

Stories about travelers are as old as humankind.  

One of the earliest travelers’ tales was Homer’s Odyssey, from 800 B.C.E., the story of Odysseus’ journey home after the Trojan Wars.

 

 

Howrah Station, Calcutta, India

 

From Homer to Dante,  Xuanzang , Marco Polo and Cervantes to Halliburton, to Kerouac, Durell, Theroux, Iyer, writers have taken their readers along on their travels, whether the journey is  fiction, non-fiction, or a combination of both.

 

 

Train Station, Burma/Myanmar

 

“The traveler sees what he sees.The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
- G. K. Chesterton

 

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

He who does not travel does not know the value of men.
– Moorish proverb

 

Kandahar, Afghanistan

 

 

 Sri Lanka

 

 Burma/Myanmar

 

“The World is a book,  and those who do not travel
read only a page.”
- St. Augustine

 

Kandze, Tibet

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

 

Maimana, Afghanistan

 

 

Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

 

 

Burma/Myanmar

 

 

Kabul, Afghanistan

 

 

Russia

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

 

The Grit, Grind, and Glory of Work

India

Tibet

India

India

Whether it is men fishing from poles in Sri Lanka, nuns washing dishes, miners digging beneath the earth in Afghanistan, or Dalits cleaning the streets of India, work is universal, yet  intensely personal. Many work in order to survive another day.

Srinagar, Kashmir

Myanmar/Burma

India

New York City

Java, Indonesia

Yangon, Myanmar

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

Sri Lanka

Weligama, Sri Lanka

Filadelfia, Paraguay

“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.”

-  Kahlil Gibran

Croatia

Between Peshawar and Lahore, Pakistan

Thailand

Saffron Harvest, Srinagar, Kashmir

Pakistan

Nature’s Great Masterpiece

The relationship between elephants and people goes back millennia. Elephants have been an integral part of history, religion, art,  and culture in many parts of Asia.

Chiang Mai, Thailand

“Th’ unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, us’d all his might, and wreathed. His lithe proboscis.”
-John Milton, Paradise Lost

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Kerala, India

Elephants have been important in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Ganesh, the Hindu elephant God, is worshipped as the lord of success, education,  knowledge, wisdom and wealth.

Mumbai, India

Angkor Thom, Cambodia

John Kistler’s book, War Elephants,  pointed out that for over a thousand years, generals used elephants as tanks, bulldozers, and cargo trucks long before such vehicles existed. Elephants built roads, swung swords, and terrified opposing forces.

Burma/Myanmar

Burma/Myanmar

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Aristotle called the elephant  “the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind.”

India

“Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant – the only harmless great thing.”

-John Donne (English poet, 1572-1631)

Calcutta, India

Varanasi, India

Fusion: The Synergy of Images and Words Part II

Rieti, Italy, 2006

 

We are familiar with words describing images, but not so familiar with images describing words and the impact reading has on our lives.

Los Angeles, California, USA, 1992

For as long as people have read books, artists have tried to portray the relationship of a reader and his/her book.

Kabul, Afghanistan, 2003

 

No matter where I go in the world, I see people immersed in books.  It doesn’t matter if they are rich or poor, young or old, they find comfort, information, distraction, and inspiration between the covers of their books.

Kandze, Tibet, 2002

Los Angeles, California

Sri Lanka, 1995

 

Kuwait City, Kuwait, 1991

Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon, Burma, 2010

Tibet, 2001

Afghanistan, 1992

Afghanistan, 1984

Kunduz, Afghanistan, 2002

 

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

– Jorge Luis Borges