Steve

McCurry
Untold

The Stories
Behind the
Photographs

Foreword

Shooting Under Fire

India By Rail
Monsoon
The Afghan Girl
After the Storm
Gateway to India
In the Vale of Sorrow, Kashmir
Sanctuary: The Temples of Angkor
Yemen: A Country Apart
September 11th
The Tibetans
Beyond the Footsteps of Buddha
Hazara: Strangers in the Homeland
Access to Life: Fighting HIV/AIDS
Chronology
Bibliography
Index
Previous page: Steve McCurry in monsoon floods, Porbander, India, 1983 / Above: Portrait photographer, Kabul, Afghanistan, 1992

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Foreword

Flying low over Lake Bled, on assignment in

Slovenia in February 1989, the pilot took the plane
dangerously close to the waters surface. The
wheels caught and we went down, the propeller
shattering as we hit the water. The plane flipped,
and the fuselage began to sink in the icy lake.
My seat belt was stuck, but an instinct for self
preservation kicked in and I was able to wrestle
free. The pilot and I swam under the aircraft to
the surface. My camera and bag are still twenty
meters down.
Of course, Ive lost more than one camera
over thirty years as a photographer, but despite
countless close shaves and one or two disasters,
nothing has diminished my passion for photography
and travel sometimes in places of overriding
beauty, sometimes in places Id like to forget. And
nothing has dented my faith in the human spirit, or
in unexpected human kindness. From the fisherman
who dragged us from the freezing Lake Bled to the
stranger who hauled me to shore in Bombay when
I was attacked off Chowpatty Beach during the
Ganesh Chaturthi festival in 1993 (see p. 103), I have
had the good fortune to meet compassionate
and welcoming people throughout my travels; and
the kindest were often those who lived in the
harshest of conditions. Compelling photography
doesnt require exotic travel, but I needed to wander
and explore.
This was a lesson I learned early, it all
started in 1978, the year that I left my job as a staff
photographer at a newspaper in Philadelphia to
buy a couple of hundred rolls of film and a oneway plane ticket to India. A year later, in 1979,
I secretly crossed the border into Afghanistan
with themujahideen, carrying little more than my
cameras and a Swiss Army knife. I emerged months
later with a reservoir of experiences that stands me
in good stead even today.
Each trip, each assignment, every place and
person Ive experienced and every photograph
Ive taken represents a step on the trail from my
first experiences to the present day. The camera
provides a record of a particular place and time,

and every photograph I make is meant to stand

on its own as a memorable image, but at the
same time each one forms part of a wider story.
This book presents some of the stories I have
observed,others that I have sought out, and still
others that leapt out at me when I least expected it.
I have made thousands of photographs
over the course of my career, most of which
have never been published, but alongside
this archive is another, equally extensive store
of non-photographic material. I have saved
countlessobjects and ephemera from handcoloured studio portraits in Kabul and journals of
train rides across India, to press passes in Iraq and
landmine warnings from Cambodia. A large number
are presented here for the first time.
This book is a record of these experiences,
but also the untold stories behind them. It is a
tribute to the places Ive been, the things Ive seen
and the people Ive known.
Steve McCurry

Pilgrim at a Stupa, Amdo, Tibet, 2001

Monsoon

Steve McCurry in location?, Australia, 1984

Dates & Locations

19834
Australia, Bangladesh, China,
India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka

Photograph from the series Monsoon by Brian

Brake, India, 1960

Synopsis
Both a blessing and a curse,
destructive and sustaining, the
monsoon affects half the worlds
people. Infamous for torrential
rain-bearing winds that pore
across Asia from tropical oceans,
the monsoon remains one of
lifes most reliable occurrences
and critical uncertainties. The
result of meticulous planning and
deep, personal inspiration, Steve
McCurry journeyed through three
continents to fully document
and endure the dramatic and
elemental gift of the gods as life
seemed to hang in precarious
balance.

In 1961, at the age of 11, a young Steve McCurry

saw a photo story on the Indian monsoon in
LIFE magazine, shot by the celebrated Magnum
photographer Brian Brake. He could not have
imagined then that he would one day inherit
Brakes mantle as master of the photo essay, or
that his own experience of the monsoon would
result in photographic publications that now stand
as classics. McCurrys monsoon story would be
distinguished by a broader geographical scale, and
by his ambition to picture the inconsistency and
indifference of one of the planets most spectacular
weather phenomena. The dominant image of the
monsoon is that of overwhelming levels of rain,
but McCurry wanted to explore the event in all
its complexity, from floods to dust storms, and to
picture the many ways in which those who depend
on it for survival cope with its welcome but often
destructive cycles.
From the subcontinent east to Southeast
Asia, China, the Philippines and Australia, the
monsoon (from the Arabic word mausi, meaning
season) brings torrential rain at some times
of the year and drought at others, the result
of differences in temperature between the
continental landmasses and the oceans. From
his first trip to India, in 197880, McCurry was
immediately aware of its potential as a subject
for a photo essay, but the sheer scale of the
topic meant that it didnt become a defined
project until the spring of 1983. McCurry often
works on projects concurrently, and he started to
photograph for a monsoon essay while he was
travelling through Pakistan, India and Bangladesh,
working on his India By Rail story. Most of my
photographic projects involve places Ive already
travelled in, McCurry says. With the monsoon in
India, I had been living it for two or three years
while working on other stories. Because I had
already experienced the monsoon, I knew what the
dramatic elements were. It either rains too much
or not enough.
McCurry began his monsoon project with a
trip to Sri Lanka in May 1983. He had researched

the pattern of the monsoons likely arrival in

various regions in order to construct a rough
shooting schedule that left plenty of flexibility;
for while the monsoons arrival and effects are
broadly known, neither can be predicted with
precision. As McCurry says, Theres no point
spending too much time coming up with preconceived plans, because you easily end up
disappointed. I prefer to get to a place, immerse
myself and then go from there as things develop.
In Sri Lanka he gathered the latest information
about the projected arrival of the rains, then
travelled northwards through India from June to
September, tracking the weather as far as the
Himalayan mountains and the Kathmandu Valley
in Nepal. When I heard that the monsoon had
arrived in a particular region, Id jump on a plane
and get there. Whatever I might be doing when it
started to rain, Id drop everything and rush out to
take pictures. A really heavy downpour only lasts
for several minutes, so when it starts to rain you
have to respond immediately.
These downpours offered both a practical
challenge and a marvellous opportunity to capture
something unique. In the first instance, McCurry
was faced with keeping his cameras and lenses
dry not an easy proposition while wading through
chest-high floodwaters or fighting a sudden
deluge. I carried a large umbrella when I shot in the
rain. I would keep my back turned to the wind, and
half my time was spent keeping the camera lens
dry. Sometimes, in a downpour, that lens seemed
like the only dry object for fifty miles. I was always
soaked, but the lens survived. I learned to balance
the umbrella on my shoulder, but almost invariably
an assistant would squeeze under as well, forcing
my camera out. Despite the difficulties, McCurry
was able to capture stunning images, from scenes
of a young girl in Bangladesh looking desperately
cold and dejected as she tries to shelter herself
against the downpour (see p. 62) and a dog waiting
anxiously for a door to be opened while the waters
rise around him (see p. 68), to lyrically beautiful
compositions such as that of monks at Angkor Wat,

Locals riding a rickshaw through heavy monsoon rain, Varanasi, India, 1983

49

Steve McCurry photographing in location?, Nepal, 1983

Steve McCurry photographing in location?, India, 1983

shooting again.
Back on his feet, McCurry took a series of
photographs that illustrate how the monsoon could
bring a degree of risk even to the most mundane
daily tasks. He was still in Goa, shooting a waterfall
that was usually a trickle but which the rains had
turned into a torrent. One of the images shows
two men crossing the river, presumably a regular
journey but now perilous (see below). As they step
unsteadily across some large stones, one of the
men pulls the other, who is in danger of being blown
away as he desperately holds on to his umbrella.
Behind them the swollen waterfall crashes down
into the river. The scene is a demonstration of the
vulnerability of humanity in the face of the power
unleashed by nature, and it reveals also McCurrys
tenacity in the face of potential danger, particularly

Cover and pages from McCurrys Monsoon journal, 1983

their orange robes luminous in the mist (see p. 130).

Usually for me, weather is an ally, creating mood
and drama for photographs. But the monsoon was
a lesson in humility.
During one period of calm before the rains
came, McCurry documented the fishermen of
Goa, who base their working lives on the cycle
of the dry and wet monsoons (the colder, dry
monsoon comes in the winter months, and the
warm, rainy version in the summer). He recalls,
I spent a few weeks in the little fishing village
of Sirgao, near the city of Panjim. The seas were
already getting rough, but the rain was nowhere
in sight. For several nights I slept in a fishermans
house, waking at 4 a.m. to spend the day with him
and his friends in their carved dugout canoes. I
sat in the bottom of the boat with my camera bag
while one oarsman knelt in front of me, another
behind. Waves would wash over the sides, but
the fishermen just laughed. They fished until it
was impossible to take their boats out. It was a
difficult life, and every year there were men who
didnt make it back.
An ability to become so absorbed in his work
that he is oblivious to a potentially treacherous
environment is something McCurry shares
with many of the worlds great documentary
photographers. One day, while photographing
from a bridge near Goa, the saturated wooden
slats of the structure suddenly gave way beneath
him, and he tumbled on to the rocks below. The
next thing he knew, he woke up in a hospital in
the town. He lay in a bed, concussed and semiconscious, observing the ward through a drowsy
haze. It was a large room with overhead fans and
droning flies, and nuns that seemed to float by.
I was on an intravenous drip. The patient on one
side of me was handcuffed to his bed, and the
man on the other side was a recent amputee. I
couldnt move, and I was afraid to ask what had
happened for fear theyd say I would never walk
again. I finally recovered enough that I got up and
left, before I was discharged, and went a friends
house to recuperate. About a week later I was

Two men crossing a swollen river after the bridge was washed away,
Goa, India, 1983

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Monsoon

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McCurrys handwritten notes, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 1983

McCurrys handwritten photograph ideas for the Monsoon story, 1983

was leeches. I had them crawling up my trousers

and on my back, between my toes, even in my hair.
I used salt to get them off, or Id burn them loose.
They would swell up like balloons with blood.
Undeterred, he would be out again the next day.
McCurrys travels took him from places
overwhelmed by sudden downpours to other
regions desperate for rain. In the dry areas there
was often a palpable tension in the air, like straw
in the throat, and in one such place, the Thar
Desert of Rajasthan, McCurry captured one of
his most striking images. I was in a beat-up taxi
travelling through the desert to Jaisalmer, near the
IndiaPakistan border. It was almost as hot as the
planet ever gets. The rains had failed in that part of
Rajasthan for the past thirteen years, and I wanted
to capture something of the mood of anticipation
before the monsoon hit. As we drove down the
road, I could see a dust storm growing it typically
happens just before the monsoon breaks. For miles
around it built into a huge wall of dust, moving like a
tidal wave, until eventually we were enveloped in a
thick fog. The temperature dropped suddenly as it
arrived, and the noise was deafening. We stopped
the car. Some women and children were working on
road maintenance, something theyre driven to do
when the crops fail, and they clustered together to

McCurrys hotel receipt, Great Eastern Hotel, Calcutta, 23 October 1983

Letter and envelope from the Director General of Meteorology, India, to McCurry c/o Mr Avinash Pashricha, 29 July 1983

McCurrys press pass, Press Information

Bureau, Government of India, 1984

Steve McCurrys feet, location?, 1983

Steve McCurry photographing in Nepal, 1983

following his earlier fall or perhaps an optimistic

sense of security that comes from encountering
the world through the rectangular frame of a
viewfinder.
Some months into the project, McCurry
travelled to the northern Indian city of Varanasi,
where he was struck by the apparent normality with
which people continued to live their lives during
the monsoon, even though many of their homes
and businesses were under water; similar thoughts
would occur to him in Delhi, as he photographed
vendors selling food from street carts with casual
nonchalance, despite being utterly drenched (see
p. 64). Thats when I realized that I wasnt covering
a natural disaster, but a regular, annual event. Even
so, some scenes were disturbing. At the burning
ghats of Varanasi, where Hindus cremate their
dead beside the Ganges so that the ashes can
be washed away by the river, there was nowhere
to burn the bodies because of the floods. Poorer
people would simply throw cadavers into the river
sometimes within a few feet of where people were
washing.
Rising floodwaters incubate and spread a
range of pernicious diseases, and McCurry has
been fortunate never to catch any of the maladies
common to the rainy season: cholera, malaria and
typhoid, among others. Venturing out into the turgid
waters always carried a degree of risk, however,
and it was rarely pleasant. He photographed where
possible from buildings or a small boat, but often,
as at the small village of Porbandar in Gujarat, he
was forced to enter the water (see p. 2). I took a
room on the second floor of a hotel that was empty
save for the night watchman. The ground floor was
flooded, with water knee-deep until you started
climbing the stairs. For four days I waded out into
the submerged village to photograph, wearing a
pair of tennis shoes (see right). A local assistant
carried my camera bag. I worked for eight hours a
day in chest-deep, slimy water that was probably
infested with cholera, where dead animals floated
among the garbage and sewage. Another concern

Chaiwalla in monsoon floods, Porbandar, India, 1983

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Monsoon

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Steve McCurry with an Aboriginal man in location?, Australia, 1984

Steve McCurry in location?, China, 1984

McCurrys itinerary, China, 1983

shield themselves from the sand and dust, singing

and praying and barely able to stand.
The resulting picture (see p. 57) is one of
McCurrys most memorable photographs. It
illustrates his belief in being perpetually present,
always aware of where you are, rather than thinking
of where you are heading. You cant get hung up
on what you think your real destination is. The
journey is just as important. You have to be open
to what you see along the way, and ready to seize
an opportunity stop and make the picture. Such

Girls seeking shelter beneath a rice basket, Java, Indonesia, 1983

an approach marries well with the erratic nature of

the monsoon, although the need to stop repeatedly
can be difficult. It can be hard, especially when
youve already stopped many times, or its raining,
or too cold or too hot, or if youre in the middle of a
conversation. In some ways, its easier when youre
working alone, or with only an assistant. Then we
always work to get the right picture, and that may
mean stopping fifty times.
By September of 1983 McCurry was heading
high into the Himalayas, where the vast mountain
ranges would offer another way of picturing the
monsoon. He flew to Kathmandu in Nepal, then
travelled into the mountains, his bus narrowly
avoiding a landslide that had washed away much
of the road. Above the Kathmandu Valley, he was
greeted by long views of the suns rays bursting
through saturated clouds, as the annual cycle of the
monsoon rains reached its final weeks (see below
left).
As the summer rains died away on the
subcontinent, McCurry made plans to travel to
China, Australia and Indonesia from December
to March, seeking out the farthest reaches of the
Asian monsoon system. In Australia, he wanted
to see how the monsoon affected the aboriginal
peoples who inhabit the rainforests of the Northern
Territory around Darwin. He travelled with the
Aborigines as they hunted, and photographed them
crafting light canoes from eucalyptus bark living
with their environment rather than fighting against
it. In Indonesia, he spent a week in the mountains
of Java, where the massive Galunggung volcano
had erupted just a few months before and was
continuing to spew ash into the atmosphere. From
there he moved on to the city of Surabaya, travelling
around by boat to witness how quickly nature
began to take hold once the flood waters rushed in.
In a place called Bojonegoro, a neighbourhood had
been flooded for fifteen days, and a beautiful carpet
of green pond plants had grown over the surface
of the water. The village looked as if its houses had
been sunk into putting greens. It was a surreal
sight, with people casually strolling waist-deep in

River, swollen by the Monsoon rains, snaking through Arnhem Land, Northern Territory,
Australia, 1984

this green soup, seemingly disembodied. In what

looks at first like an everyday snapshot, a girl leans
against a white picket fence (see p. 58). It takes a
moment to realize that her house is submerged,
and the green carpet perpendicular to her chest
hides three feet of water. Characteristically, faced
with a scene of someone undergoing hardship,
however regularly it may occur, McCurry focuses on
the humanity of the person he pictures, capturing
beauty in the most unlikely situations.
McCurrys exploration of the Asian monsoon
was initially published in National Geographic in
December 1984 and then expanded in a book
entitled Monsoon, published in 1995. These
projects were the synthesis of some 12 months
of work over several years, work that gave the
photographer an appreciation of both the fragility
of life and the determination of people to carry on
under the most adverse conditions. The rains are
longed for on the one hand, but theyre a disaster on
the other, and one that most people cant escape.
They can only watch as the floodwaters seep into
their living rooms. Theres a sense of fatalism in
such places. The wheel turns and people go on.
During his experience of the monsoon, McCurry

realized that he was dealing with the fundamentals

of life. These people live on intimate terms with the
weather. They work through rainstorms oblivious
to the discomfort, and millions of families live in
shacks where water drips from the ceilings. When
theres drought, they wait; when theres flood, they
cope. He captures those critical moments when an
individual, faced with the insurmountable, resolves
to carry on, but his images never tip over into
sentimentality. Instead, what we see through his
eyes are scenes of strength, humour and resilience.
McCurry has said that this project required
a concentration that bordered on masochism, a
total immersion in the monsoon and in the dayto-day experience of millions of people. I spent
day after day in grit-filled heat not meant for even
mad dogs or Englishmen, wallowing in filthy
water up to my chest, or standing in the street
in a torrential downpour, with an incredulous
assistant desperately wishing he were somewhere
else. In those moments I began to learn the art
of patience, and I began to empathize with the
people whose lives are ruled by the weather. I was
changed by my time covering the monsoon. Half
the worlds population is affected by the whim of
these winds. This is the reality, and it will stay with
me forever.

Evening light catching rain-soaked paddy fields, near the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, 1983

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