“Paintography”

Every person who enjoys photography, especially analogue photography, knows how important  it is to be conscious of the main variables that play in making a good picture. I am talking about manual settings, the rule of the light and the attention to the composition of the image, its contrast and its colors. One of my favorite living photographers is Steve McCurry… Who is he?

Well, even if the name sounds new for some of you, I think that he will be suddenly recognized when you’ll see one of his most famous pictures: the afghan girl. This picture went around the world when S. McCurry published it on National Geographic magazine trying to find the girl in order to take a second picture of this already famous but unknown girl. Even if I suggest you to see this documentary that tells about this amazing story, this is not the core of my post.

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What I’d like to underline about this talented photographer is how his pictures reminds me of something else. 

I saw many of his exhibitions (the last in Italy, see here) and still I feel the same emotion every single time I look at one of Steve’s picture: it is always a painting to me.

Maybe it is because  my love for arts or  the many museums that I have had the opportunity to visit, but I think that there is something more in this sensation : I am sure that this is the reason why S. McCurry’s photography moves feelings and attracts people.

They are paintings indeed: colorful, contrasted, well composed paintings.

Imagine looking at a  Rembrandt masterpiece and the way in which he plays with the light on the face and on the details of a figure.  Doesn´t it feel like an attempt to focus your view on some particular things? There is a sort of focal distance between what he wanted to underline, like the wrinkles of the hands or the shining texture of a dress, and the rest of the figure or the background.

It is something very similar to  McCurry’s pictures: he focuses on the main object and blurs the wall, sometimes in a soft color on color palette and others in  very contrasted black and white colors.

Isn’t it photography?

I believe that in the same way in which Rembrandt gave life to his portraits by playing with the white paint (softer and diffuse on the face, punctual and spotted on the eye pupils) , McCurry creates contrasted images with the camera.  Thanks to a good lens he can keep focused the eyes and blur the background.

But there are more aspects of McCurry’s photography that reminds me of art masterpieces such as the brightness of the colors he chooses to shoot and the background he framed for composing the picture.

Some names came to my minds: Monet, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Renoir, Manet …

Obviously the strong point of S. McCurry’s photography are the people he shot: he chooses accurately the most impressive faces he encounters and the bright colors of countries like India and Africa.

But even if the subject is clearly different,  the composition takes something from a painting. He  decides how many levels he wants to show in a sight or when to cut a picture in a 2D painting way instead of a prospective view, like when he  plays with the geometric lines of a wall.

Like in a museum, in front of a masterpiece, these pictures take me far away in an amazing landscape or in a stranger’s deep gaze.

Article by Alessandra Ferragina