The Unguarded Moment

by Steve McCurry

The title of this book is a phrase that Steve McCurry uses a lot when talking about his work - he is always trying to capture those 'unguarded moments' when people are at their most unselfconscious and natural. McCurry takes photographs all over the world, for National Geographic magazine and his own projects, so this book includes the places, colours and forms of Yemen, Mali, Niger, Chad, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), France and the former Yugoslavia, among others. "The Unguarded Moment" is the same size as South Southeast, but apart from the wider range of countries and continents covered, another key difference between the two titles is that all the images in this new book are landscape format. In "The Unguarded Moment", people go about their everyday business in extraordinary circumstances and settings, like the young tea vendor wading through the waist-deep monsoon waters in India, the fishermen casting their nets in the Niger river in Mali's Sahel Desert and the boy working in a candy factory in Kabul, Afghanistan. This book includes striking portraits of a Tuareg woman in Mali, an intense you ng gypsy boy in Marseille, France and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma. There are children paying close attention to their teachers in school rooms in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, as well as five young monks happily playing with computer games at a monastery in India, just like any other boys their age would.

Genres: Photography, Art, Travel

156 pages, Hardcover

First published May 23, 2009

About the author

Steve McCurry is an American photographer, freelancer, and photojournalist. His photo Afghan Girl, of a girl with piercing green eyes, has appeared on the cover of National Geographic several times. McCurry has photographed many assignments for National Geographic and has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1986.
McCurry is the recipient of numerous awards, including Magazine Photographer of the Year, awarded by the National Press Photographers Association; the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal; and two first-place prizes in the World Press Photo contest (1985 and 1992).

Reviews

[Dmitry Berkut · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this album when I was leaving Steve McCurry's exhibition. The scale of his displays is staggering. The same goes for the album; it doesn't fit on any shelf in my house. Seriously though, I love Steve's work; he's a true legend in photojournalism. And he really sees color and builds composition upon it. One of the best.

[Trike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steve McCurry (website) took one of the most famous photos of all time, an Afghan girl with mesmerizing green eyes who would have been a supermodel had she lived in the West.



The Unguarded Moment illustrates that this was no fluke. He really has a knack for capturing amazing images of people all over the world going about their daily routines. How he gets away with some of these I have no idea. Whenever I've tried taking photos of people in other countries, they've always been hyper-aware of the camera. Some people in South Africa insisted I pay them for the privilege. (I didn't.)

McCurry really manages to impart that ephemeral "sense of place" and gives us a peak into moments of people's lives. And every time I look at his photos I can't figure out how the hell he does it.

My major gripe about many art and photo books is that they have the pictures span two pages. That is stupidly horrible design, because you lose part of the image in the valley between pages, and often the two pages don't match up anyway.

The designers of publisher Phaidon have never done that in any of their books I've purchased. The photos are presented on a single page so you can actually see the whole thing. In this instance, you have to turn the quite large book on its side to look at the photos, which are presented in landscape orientation. A photo book as it's meant to be.

Here's one of my favorite photos from the book. It's difficult to find other examples, because McCurry has put most of his pictures on his website. Go look at them. Marvel.

[Mohammed Alshehhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

لقد استمتعت بمشاهدة الصور
I have very much enjoyed the watching the photos

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://pin.it/6fwYwl2

[Russell Berg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of absolutely wonderful images. This man can find the moment and he captures it for us in the image. Really eye opening.