This is a portfolio of the best of Steve McCurry's photography: classical, magical and powerful images from South and Southeast Asia. McCurry takes photographs all over the world, for National Geographic magazine and his own projects, but it is the people, places, colours and forms of Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma) that have inspired his most sublime images -- photographs which transcend their original editorial purpose to become classics of photography.
South Southeast features sixty-seven photographs with brief captions. A short text about McCurry introduces the book and he has written commentaries to accompany eight of the images, telling the stories behind them.
This is a portfolio of the best of Steve McCurry's photography: classical, beautiful and often powerful images from the countries of South and South East Asia.
Product Details
Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Phaidon Press; First Edition edition (August 29, 2000)
Steve McCurry, recognized universally as one of today's finest image-makers, has won many of photography's top awards. Best known for his evocative color photography, McCurry, in the finest documentary tradition, captures the essence of human struggle and joy. Member of Magnum Photos since 1986, McCurry has searched and found the unforgettable; many of his images have become modern icons. Born in Philadelphia, McCurry graduated cum laude from the College of Arts and Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University. After working at a newspaper for two years, he left for India to freelance. It was in India that McCurry learned to watch and wait on life. "If you wait," he realized, "people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view."
His career was launched when, disguised in native garb, he crossed the Pakistan border into rebel-controlled Afghanistan just before the Russian invasion. When he emerged, he had rolls of film sewn into his clothes and images that would be published around the world which were among the first to show the conflict there. His coverage won the Robert Capa Gold Medal for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, an award dedicated to photographers exhibiting exceptional courage and enterprise. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including Magazine Photographer of the Year, awarded by the National Press Photographers' Association. This was the same year in which he won an unprecedented four first prizes in the World Press Photo Contest. He has won the Olivier Rebbot Memorial Award twice.
Steve McCurry has covered many areas of international and civil conflict, including Burma, Sri Lanka, Beirut, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Gulf War, the former Yugoslavia, and continuing coverage of Afghanistan and Tibet. He focuses on the human consequences of war, not only showing what war impresses on the landscape, but rather, on the human face.
McCurry's work has been featured in every major magazine in the world and frequently appears in National Geographic magazine with recent articles on Tibet, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and the temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia. McCurry is driven by an innate curiosity and sense of wonder about the world and everyone in it. He has an uncanny ability to cross boundaries of language and culture to capture stories of human experience. "Most of my images are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person's face. I try to convey what it is like to be that person, a person caught in a broader landscape, that you could call the human condition."
A high point in his career was the rediscovery of the previously unidentified Afghan refugee girl that many have described as the most recognizable photograph in the world today. When McCurry finally located Sharbat Gula after almost two decades, he said, "Her skin is weathered; there are wrinkles now, but she is a striking as she was all those years ago." McCurry returned from an extended assignment in China on September 10, 2001. His coverage at Ground Zero on September 11 is a testament to the heroism and nobility of the people of New York City. "You felt the horror and immediately, instinctively understood that our lives would never be the same again."
McCurry has published books including The Imperial Way (1985), Monsoon (1988), Portraits (1999), South Southeast (2000), Sanctuary (2002), The Path to Buddha: A Tibetan Pilgrimage (2003), Steve McCurry (2005), Looking East (2006) In the Shadow of Mountains (2007) and The Unguarded Moment. (2009)
This must be the photography publication of the millennium. Until I picked up South Southeast, there was not one single photography book that evoked this deep impression in me everytime I turned a page. Not only does Steve McCurry's photography draw the reader into the world he witnessed and captured so beautifully, the massive full page pictures transports the colour and essence of life from the region before your very eyes. You really must see for yourself to appreciate this absolutely excellent work. My only criticism is why did he wait so long to share this with us.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsQuite Possibly The Most Beautiful Book Of Photographs Ever, November 27, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: South Southeast (Hardcover)
Not to be missed by anyone; this book has inspired travelers, myself among them, to seek out the impossibly fantastical colors, people and architecture of the southeast buried in its pages. This book has stolen the breath away from every single person who has ever picked it up off my coffee table. It was a gift that I will never forget that also changed my perception of the gift giver forever -- an incredible surprise to have enjoyed it as I have, a thoughtful present for anyone with an imagination. Give this book to someone you love and wish to inspire.
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As a lover of photography books, and pictures of exotic locales, I bought this volume based on the glowing recommendations of the other reviewers from Amazon.com. The buyer should know most of the images were taken in India, and so if one is expecting a good mix of images from various places in southeast Asia, he is not going to find them in this book. Nevertheless there is a good balance of pictures of people (i.e., portraits), people going on with the business of their lives (working, playing, begging), and a few stunning city landscapes (I wish there were more of these). The book is not cheap-there are not really that many pages (one image per page)- and although the quality of the paper and the pictures is good, it is not superb. I have owned better. Overall, for those readers who love looking at beautiful pictures, or those who can relate to pictures of people and places in Asia, this book is worthwhile buying.
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