NEW YORK, NY.- Peter Fetterman Gallery presents "UNTOLD" a selection of Steve McCurry's most iconic images and the release of "Untold, The Stories Behind the Photographs."
This most recent collaboration between McCurry and Phaidon is a complete documentary record of 14 of his most powerful and beautiful stories. Described by McCurry as a tribute "to the places I've been, the thing's I've seen and the people I've known." An intimate and intricate archive, each chapter is complimented with personal records, handwritten notes, never-before-seen images, fascinating accounts and exciting narrative.
On view in the gallery's Project Room from August 24th to November 30th, the exhibition runs concurrently with Sebastião Salgado's "Genesis" thus bringing together two of the greatest living masters of photojournalism.
In 1984 McCurry was asked to join the renowned Magnum Photo agency. The agency, which counts numerous war reporters among its members, sells images to magazines, publishing houses and museums. In contrast to other agencies, the photographers are not commissioned to produce certain works, but work independently and select their themes for themselves. McCurrys works published in magazines such as Geo, National Geographic and Time Magazine are also the fruit of this tradition. As a photographer, McCurry aligns himself with Henri Cartier-Bresson, who claimed a photographer should be always on the alert and ready to jump, decisively, to capture life. As a Magnum photographer, McCurry feels an obligation towards classic documentary photography and thus the truth, i.e., he sees himself as an eye-witness who produces images without manipulation. If you want to call Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, André Kertész and Henri Cartier-Bresson documentary photographers, then Id be proud to be called one, says McCurry.
Steve McCurry was born in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied film and history at Pennsylvania State University in the Arts and Architecture faculty with the aim of becoming a documentary filmmaker. In 1972 he turned his attention to photography. Unlike film, this gave him the chance to be independent, to work without a team and a large budget. His desire to travel and to get to know other worlds and cultures led him to photography. Early on, he expressed his admiration for the works of photographers Brassai, Robert Capa and Diane Arbus. After completing his studies, he worked initially on the local newspaper Todays Post. Having worked independently for some years, he travelled to India and Afghanistan for the first time in 1979. Disguised as a Mujahedeen fighter, he managed to enter into Afghanistan and supplied the first photos of the Afghanistan conflict to the western world, which were subsequently published in the New York Times, Time Magazine and Geo in 1980. McCurry has been awarded various prizes for his work, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal and the National Press Photographers Award.