Steve McCurry Research- Kassidy Powell

While reading over the Steve McCurry scandal, the only thing that was running through my mind was "why are people destroying this dude's reputation?" I think he was fine in everything he had done, EXCEPT for the fact that he didn't decide to classify himself as a visual storyteller until after everything: “ 'I’ve always let my pictures do the talking, but now I understand that people want me to describe the category into which I would put myself, and so I would say that today I am a visual storyteller,' McCurry tells TIME."

After the fact, McCurry classified himself specifically as a visual storyteller, meaning it was fine for him to edit his work because now it was considered artistry as compared to candid images.

While I was reading, though, I found an article posted by PetaPixel which went over how the author,  Kshitij Nagar, found all of these different people in India who attested to the fact that McCurry's "candids" weren't actual candids, but in fact much more posed images. As someone interested in photography (I don't think I'm good enough to specifically classify myself as a photographer),  I have directed people around unless I'm going for an actual candid, in which I try and use a quick enough shutter speed that no one notices what I'm doing. But the images in which I have people pose or I direct them about, those aren't images that I would ever dream of classifying as candids. I can see why so many people are so skeptical of McCurry now after everything that has happened, they just don't trust him.
Even his most popular image, "The Afghan Girl" has been found to be slightly edited, a fact I discovered in Business Insider.
Instead of her eyes being as clear as they are in every image I've ever seen, her eyes are slightly darker and there is more mud and grime on her face than is typically depicted.
I respect Steve McCurry because even after all of this, he still hasn't stopped taking pictures and doing the things he loves, but at the same time, I feel like he could've avoided a lot of a hassle if he would have just labeled himself beforehand and saved himself dealing with the controversy, but overall I feel like he wasn't the worst person because of the ordeal. Before this class, I had never even known about the scandal so it probably wasn't that horrible for his career.

Links:

http://time.com/4351725/steve-mccurry-not-photojournalist/

http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-mccurry-photo-editing-scandal-2016-5

https://petapixel.com/2016/06/07/eyes-afghan-girl-critical-take-steve-mccurry-scandal/