The Past Is Still Present

Ahmet Se l

lung around Magnum veteran American photographer Steve McCurry’s shoulders is the lens that launches a thousand symbols, a thousand iconic images. In his intrepid three-decades-long career, he’s covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (which yielded the iconic National Geographic cover image of a Pashtun orphan which we recognise as ‘Afghan Girl’), Beirut, Cambodia, the Philippines, the Gulf War, the former Yugoslavia, and continues to cover Afghanistan and Tibet. From his striking Afghan Girl image to his apocalyptic images of 9/11, McCurry has consistently produced moving, uncannily riveting pictures that come to rapidly become visual shorthand for the events he chronicles. Over the past thirty years, McCurry has also been a frequent visitor to India, where he has produced some of the most vibrant, joyous images that capture the way India celebrates. He tells us all about it:

“I first came to India in 1978. My trip was scheduled for about two weeks, but India won me over; I ended up spending two years here! Since then, I have photographed many features for National Geographic: the Indian monsoons, a train journey across India, 50 years’ Independence, Bombay, Ladakh.... What I love about India, and what keeps me coming back is the depth of culture here, the visual chaos, the endless variety of dramatic cheek-by-jowl juxtapositions it affords: modernity and tradition, the haves and have-nots, the usual and the bizarre...I love the people here, they’re so outgoing, extroverted and curious about meeting foreigners. Which segues in perfectly with the way India celebrates. Celebration here is a social thing, a public thing, it’s exuberant in nature and dramatic in scale. Take the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in Bombay, you would never see such a colourful, large procession anywhere else; not in New York, London, Paris or Tokyo. Here, even holy occasions are exuberantly social, public, community affairs.

“Above all, no matter how much it’s changing, there’s something about India that makes you feel like you’re stepping back into another time and age, someplace ancient. But this ancient spirit is alive and vital in a way it is ceasing to be everywhere else. Ancient temples and mosques are still frequented, people still believe in Shiva, Krishna, Vishnu, unlike the jaded atheists elsewhere in the world. This is what I love about India: its vibrancy, its continuity with the past. History is not dead here, you still stumble across things that are unique and unusual. With the world getting so homogenised, Cleveland and Germany are visually inter-changeable: everyone looks the same, dresses the same, carries the same cellphones, drives the same cars. But India remains unsurpassably unique.”