패션 사진 거장 기부르댕
"아프간 소녀" 의 스티브 맥커리
Two photographers, different worlds
Some photographers find the tiniest beauty in harsh surroundings, even among starving people, while others create beauty anywhere from scratch.
Steve McCurry, who shot to international stardom in 1985 with the famed photo “Afghan Girl” on the cover of National Geographic Magazine, belongs to the first group.
The hollow, sad yet beautiful green eyes of the girl in the photo definitely touched the world. To satisfy the world’s curiosity, the National Geographic team went back to Afghanistan 17 years later and found the girl who had by then become a mother of three children.
“In her face, there is an ambiguity, mystery, beauty and also a haunted quality… a complex range of emotions,” said McCurry about the famous photo during a press conference in Seoul Tuesday.
The U.S. photographer is one of today’s most renowned documentary photographers who has won numerous awards, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award in 1980 and the Olivier Rebbot Memorial Award in 1985 and 1986.
Since 1986, McCurry has been a member of Magnum Photos, the photographic cooperative whose members have snapped some of the most iconic images of the last half of the 20th century.
Starting today, 100 of McCurry’s photos will be on display at the Sejong Museum of Art, in central Seoul, under the title “Unguarded Moment.”
The exhibits cover the photographer’s journeys to the world’s trouble spots such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and India -- a country which he has visited more than 90 times -- over the last 30 years. Every photo has a profound story behind it.
His secret of discovering beauty in situations where it is least expected and capturing them to become “images that you can’t get out of your mind and that inspires you” was rather simple.
“You can be anywhere at anytime to take the special moment. It is about trying to be observing and be present in the moment. Try to understand, make a comment and show your vision of the world,” he said.
“One of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met was an old gentleman who used to take tickets at a movie theater in New York. Though it was a simple job, he was an amazing human being. The beauty of life is being able to find wonderful things.”
Guy Bourdin, on the other hand, is a photographer who artificially created beauty.
For most of his career, the late French photographer took fashion photos for magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
“Bourdin’s works remain as provocative today as when they first appeared. He is still considered as one of the most daring and intriguing fashion photographers of the 20th century,” said Shelly Verthime, curator of Bourdin’s solo exhibition currently underway at 10 Corso Como Seoul in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul.
The exhibition shows 75 of Bourdin’s photos from the 1960s and 1980s and also several short films he took during his photo shoots.
Featuring his lead model Nicolle Meyer, Bourdin used various techniques that were unfamiliar back in his time. One of Bourdin’s most significant contributions is his novel way of storytelling. Connecting several images together dramatically -- by moving from a close up on a shoe to a long shot of a building then a fade out on the ocean or the zooming onto lips, for example -- Guy was able to weave a story for his ad shoots.
Steve McCurry’s exhibition runs through May 30 at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts in Jongno-gu, central Seoul. Tickets range from 2,000 won to 8,000 won. For more information, go to www.mccurrykorea.com
Guy Bourdin’s exhibition runs through May 2 at 10 Corso Como Seoul in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul. Admission is free. For more information, call (02) 3018-1010 or visit www.10corsocomo.co.kr
By Park Min-young (claire@heraldm.com)
