Steve McCurry is known for his images of India. I chose to look at his images in more detail because I was specifically reflecting on a conversation that I had with my tutor about the importance of framing and the attention to detail in images, even when they are taken in non-posed situations. McCurry’s images are mainly non-posed and yet they are nearly all perfectly framed. Of course, these might be the selected few our of many thousands but I think that the ones I have chosen go beyond chance and display some deliberate choices.
The images I have chosen all come from McCurry’s book India (McCurry, 2015). In this book there are a range of images from portraiture to location settings but all aim to portray the diverse mix of culture, wealth and distinctive personality of the country itself, if a country can have a personality. Thinking of this course, Identity and Place, I think that it is the mix of people and the places they inhabit that creates the total perception of what India means; I don’t think that just the places, or just the people would deliver the same effect.
Fig. 1 below shows the first image that I have chosen from the book. In this image we see a scene near to the Taj Mahal of an elderly man and two children around a fire, with a camel and a worker carrying a pot in the background along with a camel. There are also two people lying down on beds in the background in front of a shelter made from branches.
This scene for me evokes destitution, a small group of people with virtually nothing to their name. The two children holding their hands to the fire suggests that it is cold and yet they do not have much in the way of clothing. The campfire nature of the scene also makes me wonder if it is a meal time but there is no food in sight.
Turning to framing. The picture is not posed, it appears to be taken McCurry has come across it. McCurry has positioned himself to have every element of the scene perfectly placed. At the top left, we can see the Taj Mahal, so know the location of the scene. This. Is positioned so that we see it, we know where we are, but it is not so large or dominant in the frame that we ignore the rest, it is there just so that we can see it. The group huddled around the fire take up the bottom left third of the picture and this becomes our primary focus, the camel takes up the top right. Due to McCurry’s positioning, the shelter is nicely positioned between the Taj and the camel and then he has gone further to time the shot so that the urn carrier is exactly in the middle of the shelter as he walks past. None of these things are coincidental. The positioning of every element in the scene is perfect and would be less so just one pace to the left or right.
In Fig. 2 below, we see two boys standing in an oil drum which itself is on a cart that is being pushed along by another man. In the background we can see a wall with faces painted on it and behind that, what looks to be a house.
Again, the picture evokes poverty because of the state of the people’s clothes, their dirty faces and the makeshift nature of the road. But all of the subjects seem happy, and the two boys seem interested in the fact that they are being photographed. We don’t know where they are going or where they have come from.
McCurry has positioned himself and timed his shot so that the cart and the man pushing are perfectly central to the frame and so the cart with the barrel in it are between the two faces on the will. Whilst we cannot see how busy this street is, I think that it is unlikely that there are many carts that come along the road such as this, the picture is ad-hoc, they do not appear to be posed and yet the framing and timing are spot on.
Looking at all of the other pictures in the book, they all bear scrutiny and achieve the same excellence in framing and timing. I had wondered if perhaps they are posed, however, in an interview, McCurry talks about the image shown in Fig. 3 where he literally saw the scene as he was passing in a car, jumped out and took two images, one of each orientation. He says that he just relied on ‘instinct’ (McCurry, 2012). My learning here is the importance of taking lots of photographs. For Assignment 4, I have come to understand the importance of details and framing but it is taking a conscious effort to do so. Lots of practice should turn this into the same ‘instinct’ that McCurry talks about.
Bibliography
McCurry, S., 2012. Steve Mccurry Unpacks ‘Dust Storm’, Rajasthan, India. [onlinevideo] Available at: <https://youtu.be/xiyG_DJRj6Y> [Accessed 25 May 2020].
McCurry, S., 2015. India. Phaidon.
Figures
Figure 1. McCurry, S. 1996. Agra, Uttar Pradesh [print] In McCurry, S (2015) India. Page 97, London, Phaidon Press.
Figure 2. McCurry, S. 1996 Ladakh [print] In McCurry, S (2015) India. Page 127, London, Phaidon Press.
Figure 3. McCurry, S., 1983. Dust Storm, Rajasthan. [image] Available at: <https://publicdelivery.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Steve-McCurry-Dust-storm-Rajasthan-1983.jpg> [Accessed 25 May 2020].