Steve McCurry

From what little I have read what I do understand is that Steve McCurry is a photographer who I would say aims to display humanity and its variety. He is the one who took the famous Afghan Girl photo and I would say he has continued to follow up on his good work and focuses on finding photos represent how different humanity is across the world.


    With this picture, I assume McCurry took it to represent tradition against modernism. I don't know much about Japanese culture but what little I do know is that the kimono which is what I believe the woman above is wearing is an article of clothing that has a long history in Japan. Modern clothing is entirely different I would say with being able to mix and match top and bottom articles of clothing, from t-shirts to polos to dress shirts and shorts, jeans, and slacks, and plenty more types of clothing there is a lot of variety in our clothes today meanwhile a kimono is similar to a robe with it being one long item. Any viewer would immediately come to notice the different style of clothing and immediately begin comparing it to our grey modern world. Nowadays basically all roadways are just concrete, and most buildings range from white to grey in color, even the vehicles in the photo are primarily neutral-toned colors. To see this vibrant red from the kimono it stands out from what our world mainly looks like today, it is great symbolism for how the world can vary.


    The photo McCurry took above is what I would have to say with basically 100% certainty a celebration of the Day of the Dead. What I do know is the photo was taken in Oaxaca, Mexico, and aside from that I have my own cultural knowledge about this holiday and celebration. With the depth of focus and centering, we immediately look at the girl in this photo and we see a wide display of color, from her red or burgundy dress to her face being half-painted to seem skull-like and finally resting above her head a basket full of what I am almost sure are marigolds. This holiday is always done right around November 1st all in order to show an appreciation and connection to those who have passed away, it is not meant to be a day of mourning it is more so a day of celebration and remembering the good times with those who have passed. Personally, this photo really hits close to home because of how beautiful and special celebrating the day is, I can't remember the details for everything but the marigolds are used to symbolize the path to our world and painting your face and even body is meant to embrace death and not fear what is to come. This is not something that is done in private but is meant to be a country-wide celebration and often masses will gather and walk the streets from their homes to the tombs of loved ones. The photo does a good job at capturing the aspect of people gathering and filling the streets to celebrate, the only space not filled with people from what can be seen is the path forward. 



    I choose this image because of the implications the photo reveals. The world for some can be bright and cheery and often the struggles in life can be drastic from their view but minuscule to an entire other population. In this photo, all we can see are two children working along what I assume is a mountainside to either harvest or plant something, all I know about the location is that it is in Nepal. In more developed countries more likely than not kids don't end up working until about high school, and some even later than that. While that may not be the case for everyone as some end up working in family-owned businesses the fact of the matter is that those kids often don't have to struggle with hard labor like the kids depicted in this image. I like this image because you can't argue that these kids aren't on this mountain to play or to have fun, they are here with a purpose. The boy in focus in the photograph is equipped with a basket for his endeavors here and he has a tool in hand to let him really dig into and move the soil around. While I may not know what this kid is going through in my head I can only imagine he needs to do this so that he can have a chance at living. Perhaps his family are farmers, but the image is that much more powerful because he seems to be 10-12 and yet he is working hard. To me kids should be having fun and living out their youth, maybe being in school learning, I would never want for a kid to feel like they need to work because it is what is required for them to live on. To me, this image tells a story that the world is unfair and it can only accomplish this by showing us what the kids in this photo are doing.

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