The Steve McCurry Effect?

A few years ago, I took part in an exhibition with the triptych below. Three photos of the same Bhopa woman from Rajasthan (India). She is never veiled like in the photo in the middle, but when we were caught in a wind that flew up a lot of desert sand, she borrowed my black H&M (!) shawl and covered her face. That also explains her red eyes.

These photos are part of a larger project about this woman and her relatives.

However, when I was part of this exhibition, I saw a group of visitors in front of these photos and in a lively discussion. I joined, told them something about the background of the woman, thinking they would be interested. One of the visitors told me she ‘knew the woman’. She knew about her story, saw the documentary and told me ‘they found her after many years’. Immediately, I sensed that she was confusing this woman with the ‘famous Afghan girl‘, the beautiful and worldfamous portrait by Steve McCurry. I explained her that it were probably her green eyes that reminded her of that photo. What followed was really strange… She accused me of not telling the truth, she told me I should not pretend these were my photos, that she knew very well these were photos of ‘that very famous photographer who also works for National Geographic”… They left, totally convinced I was a fraud.

That day, they were not the only ones who linked these photos to Steve McCurry, which I decided to take as a compliment.

Later, when I posted photos on Flickr (and not just the above, but many more images), I again got the ‘Steve McCurry’ remarks:

“This reminds me of one superfamous cover picture on National Geographic.”

“Reminiscent of the famous ‘Afghan girl’. Fantastic collection.”

What is it? Is it really just green eyes?

We decided to joke, to exploit this effect. You want to see ‘Steve McCurry’ im my images? Go ahead! Here it is, and this time on purpose.

Please note that I admire the work of Steve McCurry and don’t have the intention of creating a second ‘Afghan girl’. Especially in the border areas of India and Pakistan, like in Aghanistan, there are many more people with (light) green eyes. Beautiful people with their own stories. It’s this Bhopa family’s story that I’d like to tell and – especially – show. Preferably in a beautiful book. Any publisher interested?

More images in the slideshow below.

This entry was posted on maandag, mei 17th, 2010 at 17:59. It is filed under Blog, India and tagged with Afghanistan, Bhopa, eyes, famous Afghan girl, green, India, Mirjam Letsch, National Geographic, Rajasthan, Steve McCurry, Thar desert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.