Sacred Infinity. Photography by Steve McCurry
Photography is not a captured momentum; it is nothing but a captured feeling. Based on my own experience I noticed that I can always find a picturesque view to capture, I can even catch that great moments, one better than another... however I will never feel it all the same. Through photography you can preserve a particular form of feeling you went through at some point of your life, it keeps the emotions that you once experienced and wished to hold.
Somehow this reminded me of the dead stars shining; those stars we see in the night sky aren’t there anymore and we can only see their glow. Something similar happens to our feelings, they are all actually burned out, but they can travel through time and they are strong enough to shine for us. Indeed photography is like a universe, as when you look out in to the sky, you are really looking back in time. Just like Tim Walker’s said “Very often there is a kind of nostalgia built into a photograph by virtue of you taking it. You have taken the photograph and it’s immediately a thing of the past, the moment you press the shutter.”
No words can better describe the black and white photography than those of Ted Grant “When you photograph people in colour, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls”. I always prefer B&W shots; however, some great cultures you can only comprehend through the colours and those colours are indeed the mirror of their souls. And here, I take my hat off to Steve McCurry, one of the greatest art photographers in my opinion, and his exceptional work. The colours in his African and Indian shots truly reveal the richness of those people, his colours speak...
McCurry is fascinated by the characters, far removed from the civilization, they live in an extreme poverty, but the deepest knowledge of life that they acquire, by cultivating balance in mind and body, makes them eternal and rich on the inside. William Blake in his Marriage of Heaven and Hell wisely noticed: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” There are indeed no doors or borders in their understanding of life, they see and feel wide open, just like the endless boundaries of their huge countries. And every single time McCurry manages to catch that sacred infinity in the eyes of those men and children...
Please have a look, I wish I knew them all...
FP
