Steve McCurry is a highly well-known photojournalist. His work has been featured in many famous magazines and journals, National Geographic. The most famous of them being the “Afghan Girl”. His photographs have inspired many throughout his years of photography. However, just recently he has been under heat for using Photoshop on photos. I personally believe what he did was wrong.
McCurry’s altered images were first spotted by a photographer by the name of Paolo Viglione. Viglione posted one of McCurry;s altered images on his blog. Viglione had no intent of trying to jeopardize McCurry’s career. He just saw something interesting and thought he should post it. However, he did not realize the effect the picture would have on other photographers viewing the picture. Viglione ended up removing the picture from his blog, but the damage was already done. Soon other people began to look for other photos that McCurry had done to see if there were other modifications done to them.
McCurry was confronted on such allegations of him altering photos in his work. He personally said that he is no longer a photojournalist but a visual storyteller. He said, “My photography is my artma dnt its gratifying when people enjoy and appreciate it….”. I feel that he wanted to switch up profession to only look like what he is doing is not wrong. To be a photojournalist, your photos have to be as accurate as possible. The photos should come as they are so that the integrity of the photographer and the magazines/journals that publish the photo is kept. For him to just all of a sudden switch up his story of profession is wrong to me. Especially when he started to see that more and more people were digging up photos that he had modified.
I don’t want to overshadow that wonderful work that he did in his lifetime. He truly was a genius when it came to making photographs. However, to be under the title photojournalist and modify pictures is just wrong and showing dishonesty. I just feel that he should just apologize for what he did and move, instead of making up this whole “ visual storyteller” cover up story
Works Cited
Sel, Ahmet. “Photographer Steve McCurry Biography.” National Geographic, 25 Apr. 2016, www.nationalgeographic.com/contributors/m/photographer-steve-mccurry/.
“Botched Steve McCurry Print Leads to Photoshop Scandal.” PetaPixel, 7 May 2016, petapixel.com/2016/05/06/botched-steve-mccurry-print-leads-photoshop-scandal/.
Laurent, Olivier. “Steve McCurry: I'm Not a Photojournalist.” Time, Time, 30 May 2016, time.com/4351725/steve-mccurry-not-photojournalist/.
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