American photojournalist Steve McCurry may be best known for the "Afghan Girl" — the image of a young Pashtun refugee in Pakistan which appeared on the June 1985 edition of National Geographic magazine and has been compared to the Mona Lisa. But he also has a large portfolio of images of India that were recently brought together in a book called India by Steve McCurry (published by Phaidon/Roli Books).
In India for the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (ZeeJLF), he tells Gargi Gupta that he's made as many as 80 trips to the country since 1978, working on projects to photograph the Indian Railways, the monsoon, the city of Mumbai, Kashmir, the Indian nomadic tribes, and a series to mark 50 years of independence.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
You've been coming to India for so many years now – how do you feel it has changed, visually?
The first thing that hit me when I came to India for the first time was how many people there were. That remains the same (laughs). In some ways India has changed a lot, in other ways it's constant.
How hard is it to photograph India, to get away from the cliched images that one sees in the West?
Just because the Taj Mahal has been photographed many times and people have been to Benaras a million times, does not mean that it can't be attempted anew. One should go out there and photograph it his own way, with your own personality. You want to avoid a cliche, to catch an image in a way that's new and refreshing. That's what I have tried to do. You need to know the clichés, know what has been photographed before, but you also need to add something to the conversation and try and push the envelope a bit.
Portraits are a big part of our portfolio. Is this your way of getting away from the clichés?
I like portraits, I like discovering interesting faces, how we're all the same and yet different.
Your pictures make much of the rich colours of India. How would you photograph India if you had to do it in black & white?
I would do it exactly the same way. I don't consciously look for clever colour compositions. What I look for is a particular story, a particular emotion. Sometimes it's the colour tells a story, but mostly, it's the emotion, the composition and the light.
Tell me about ImagineAsia, the NGO you run in Afghanistan?
We started ImagineAsia 15 years ago. At the moment, it's my sister who's driving it while I provide the funds. At ImagineAsia, we give cameras to young girls in Afghanistan so that they can document their own communities and create their own art. It's fun, and allows them to look at their world in a new way, and also empowers them to use technology on their own. Education, healthcare, housing and all are important, but this is a chance for them to do something on their own.
Are you in touch with the "Afghan girl" Sharbat Gula?
Yes. We're in touch with her every month.
What do you feel about the mobile camera – does the fact that it's so easy now to take photographs mean that professional photographers will soon become redundant?
I think the mobile camera's great. I take photographs on my mobile all the time. Yesterday I must have taken some 200 pictures on it and put it up on Instagram. But that doesn't mean photographers are going to go away. People are always sending text messages on the mobile – has it made the writer any less important? Not at all. We'll always need writers who are gifted, who'll explain things to us.
