The exhibition presents an exceptional collection of nearly 200 photos that will accompany the visitor on a journey, unwinding on a path where faces, colors, scenery and lights, filled with a magical atmosphere, blend together in unique recipes of countries such as Afghanistan, India, Tibet, Burma, captured through the lens of one the masters of photo journalism, twice awarded the World Press Photo Awards, the Nobel prize for photography.
The exhibition is the narration of the silent journey that Steve McCurry has often made in the Southern and Eastern parts of the world, where he became an observer to bear witness of places rarely traveled.
"The sequence of images presented in the exhibition SOUTH-EAST – states Steve McCurry – evokes the ample mosaic of human experience and my casual encounters with silhouettes and shadows, water and light. I wanted to portray the visceral meaning of beauty and of wonder that I found in my journeys to the visitor, when the surprise of being a stranger mixes with the joy of familiarity".
As Tanja Solci, the curator of the exhibition, points out: we are staging the soul of a great artist who, in his creative and professional path, has had the extraordinary capacity of surviving the tragedy of war. A photo becomes a symbol of a historical moment; a portrait gains the strength of a sacred icon. And what if, for an instant, it was the protagonists of those pictures looking at us?
The path of the exhibition breaks from the traditional frontal relationship with the visitor: in the striking setup of Peter Bottazzi's metaphorical tree branches around which Afghan girls, monks, and Tibetan boys come alive in a thick forest where everything is suspended, where the noises and smells of the places depicted can be discerned. We lose sight of reality and get involved with the beauty of the photographic tale and of the world found by McCurry.
The exhibition South-East is divided into six thematic sections.
Portraits presents one of the most characteristic components of McCurry's art. Steve McCurry's faces tell us of lives, places and emotions captured in a remote place and freed elsewhere. Beauty, elegance, and dignity overcome the time and space in which they take place and they narrate, in a universally understood language, the complex human experience.
The invisible protagonist of the next section is silence, a thin substance capable of exalting man's moments of intimacy and meditation before the grandiosity of nature and the mystery of daily life. Traveling is a fundamental theme, not only in countries visited by the artist but also the amazement before the relationship of human beings with the Absolute.
After returning from a journey in Tibet, on September 10th, 2001, Steve McCurry witnessed, on the following day from the window of his office in New York, the destruction of the Twin Towers. A sudden and shocking event that introduces the section dedicated to War, where photos represent the tragedy, the drama of humanity against humanity; a tragedy filled with "poetry", where pain is transfigured by the harmony of the images.
The end of war is immortalized by Steve McCurry in scenes of joy, intensity of colors and life flowing in the section Joy. Daily life resurfaces from the dust of the war, its normality found in a quick hand movement or in the immediacy of a smile.
The fifth section, dedicated to Childhood, makes the traveler reflect on one the most dramatic themes of the history of humanity: the exploitation of children and the plague of children-soldiers. Their photos are capable of making astonishment cohabit with fear, and loneliness with the need of adopting an adult behavior.
The exhibition ends with the section dedicated to Beauty, in which we can find the portraits of three young girls. Among these is the famous photo of a certain green-eyed Afghan girl which has, by now, become an icon of McCurry's work and of contemporary photography.
To deepen the exhibition, there is a further section dedicated to "short films" where uninterrupted sequences of photos compose narrations of life and humanity.
The exhibition is the narration of the silent journey that Steve McCurry has often made in the Southern and Eastern parts of the world, where he became an observer to bear witness of places rarely traveled.
"The sequence of images presented in the exhibition SOUTH-EAST – states Steve McCurry – evokes the ample mosaic of human experience and my casual encounters with silhouettes and shadows, water and light. I wanted to portray the visceral meaning of beauty and of wonder that I found in my journeys to the visitor, when the surprise of being a stranger mixes with the joy of familiarity".
As Tanja Solci, the curator of the exhibition, points out: we are staging the soul of a great artist who, in his creative and professional path, has had the extraordinary capacity of surviving the tragedy of war. A photo becomes a symbol of a historical moment; a portrait gains the strength of a sacred icon. And what if, for an instant, it was the protagonists of those pictures looking at us?
The path of the exhibition breaks from the traditional frontal relationship with the visitor: in the striking setup of Peter Bottazzi's metaphorical tree branches around which Afghan girls, monks, and Tibetan boys come alive in a thick forest where everything is suspended, where the noises and smells of the places depicted can be discerned. We lose sight of reality and get involved with the beauty of the photographic tale and of the world found by McCurry.
The exhibition South-East is divided into six thematic sections.
Portraits presents one of the most characteristic components of McCurry's art. Steve McCurry's faces tell us of lives, places and emotions captured in a remote place and freed elsewhere. Beauty, elegance, and dignity overcome the time and space in which they take place and they narrate, in a universally understood language, the complex human experience.
The invisible protagonist of the next section is silence, a thin substance capable of exalting man's moments of intimacy and meditation before the grandiosity of nature and the mystery of daily life. Traveling is a fundamental theme, not only in countries visited by the artist but also the amazement before the relationship of human beings with the Absolute.
After returning from a journey in Tibet, on September 10th, 2001, Steve McCurry witnessed, on the following day from the window of his office in New York, the destruction of the Twin Towers. A sudden and shocking event that introduces the section dedicated to War, where photos represent the tragedy, the drama of humanity against humanity; a tragedy filled with "poetry", where pain is transfigured by the harmony of the images.
The end of war is immortalized by Steve McCurry in scenes of joy, intensity of colors and life flowing in the section Joy. Daily life resurfaces from the dust of the war, its normality found in a quick hand movement or in the immediacy of a smile.
The fifth section, dedicated to Childhood, makes the traveler reflect on one the most dramatic themes of the history of humanity: the exploitation of children and the plague of children-soldiers. Their photos are capable of making astonishment cohabit with fear, and loneliness with the need of adopting an adult behavior.
The exhibition ends with the section dedicated to Beauty, in which we can find the portraits of three young girls. Among these is the famous photo of a certain green-eyed Afghan girl which has, by now, become an icon of McCurry's work and of contemporary photography.
To deepen the exhibition, there is a further section dedicated to "short films" where uninterrupted sequences of photos compose narrations of life and humanity.
