Afghan Girl

The Chinese proverb, “A picture is worth a thousand words”, is routinely used when glancing through a group of images. The main purpose of pictures is to forever preserve the moment in time and look back to appreciate the memory. The purpose of preservation can be found through a collection of images taken at a family gathering, or pictures at a museum event, so people could understand what it was like during that time in history. What if the photographer was trying to capture more than a thousand words; what if they were trying to capture the face of a struggling nation? Photographer Steve McCurry was able to successfully capture the powerful image of “Afghan Girl”, and showcase the struggle and fear instilled into a woman who was forced to …show more content…
The color is able to work well with the emotions captured, because turquoise (a shade of blue), is known to represent sadness and depression. This idea can be found in the article Art Emanates from Pain and Sadness: Picasso's Blue Period, where it explained how, “The monochromatic use of blue was fairly standard in symbolist painting, often related to representations of hopelessness”, which showed how the photographer planned to have his image associated with such depressing emotions. The altered image on the cover of the magazine uses a lighter background, and swaps the turquoise for grey. This alteration of the photo for the cover was done in order for the audience to focus more on the piercing stare and make it pop with the neutral gray, as opposed to having it be somewhat overshadowed by the turquoise of the …show more content…
“I didn’t think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day,” recounts Steve McCurry, who felt that this image was sub-par to the rest of his photographs when he visited the refugee camp in 1984. It’s accurate to state that if it weren't for the image being put out the cover of such a popular magazine, then the public would have never been able to be mesmerized by the sea green stare, or be able to put a face to those affected by the Soviet-Afghan War. Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher, explained in his article, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, that a picture in today’s society, “Is basically of the same kind as the estrangement felt before one’s own image in the mirror. But now the reflected image has become separable, transportable. And where is it transported? Before the public." (Benjamin X). Benjamin argues that a photograph add another level of anxiety, because they are on display for the public to admire or critique. My image goes against his statement, because photographs such as the one I chose, are able to be reflective of events happening away from that area, and rather than creating anxiety for the person being photographed, they form an appreciation for the model’s bravery to step in front of the camera and put their vulnerable self out to the public. In the United States, citizens