Steve Mccurry

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Photographs are commonly used to tell stories, teach about cultures, remember events from the past, and more. Steve McCurry, according to Business Insider, is “probably the closest thing to a mainstream celebrity in the field” [1]. Steve McCurry is most famous for his photo of Sharbat Gula, a 17-year-old girl in a refugee camp. This photo became the widely recognizable “Afghan Girl” cover of National Geographic. Recently, there has been controversy about the usage of Photoshop and image manipulation in McCurry’s studio after a photographer named Paolo Viglione saw a botched print in Italy and wrote about it on his blog [2]. After doing some research on the situation, a lot of the controversy around McCurry’s image manipulation seems to be an overreaction, or perhaps an example of reality not meeting people’s expectations.
First, we should establish that image manipulations are a common occurrence, and always have been. In an article on Fstoppers, Alex Cooke points out that “anything, anything at all, that modifies a capture …show more content…

At the end of his second paragraph, he makes reference to the many stages of his career, and begins to describe how he feels about his more recent works: “Today I would define my work as visual storytelling … Much of my recent work has been shot for my own enjoyment in places I wanted to visit” [2]. McCurry goes on to claim that his photography is his art, and that he wants people to enjoy and appreciate it. He ends the statement to PetaPixel by specifically addressing the photo mentioned in Paolo Viglione’s blog post. According to McCurry, he was away from the studio and the botched print was a result of unauthorized changes made by a lab technician who no longer works with the

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