She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.
The photographer remembers the moment too. The light was soft. The refugee camp in Pakistan was a sea of tents. Inside the school tent he noticed her first. Sensing her shyness, he approached her last. She told him he could take her picture. “I didn’t think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day,” he recalls of that morning in 1984 spent documenting the ordeal of Afghanistan’s refugees.
The portrait by Steve McCurry turned out to be one of those images that sears the heart, and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of [National Geographic] magazine. Her eyes are sea green. They are haunted and haunting, and in them you can read the tragedy of a land drained by war. She became known around National Geographic as the “Afghan girl…”
As a kid, when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my list changed quite a bit: teacher, singer, marine biologist, writer, artist. I guess I always knew that I wanted to something creative for a living, with the exception of that marine biologist thing, which probably really only appealed to me because I liked the color turquoise. And Shamu. When I was 9, the list changed again. During a bookstore outing with my mom and sisters, I worked my way through the labeled sections at Half Price Books and found myself in the back where they keep the used magazines. There was always something about those stacks of yellow-bound National Geographic booklets that drew me in. It was the photographs…NatGeo has be best photos. But this time in particular, I was affixed on the cover of the June 1985 issue. You know the one; everyone does. But I was just 5 months old when it hit the shelves, and there I sat, 9 years later, staring in awe at the ‘Afghan Girl’.
I wasn’t born knowing that all I ever wanted to be was a photographer, and I didn’t go to college for photography, thinking it could be my career. I have always had a passion and a hobby in it though; it was something that stayed in the back of my mind since that day in Half Price Books. It’s a path that I decided to re-visit long after National Geographic started it for me 17 years ago. It’s been hard and rewarding, a period of growth and satisfaction. All with the motivation to one day shoot a photo for someone that impacts them as ‘The Afghan Girl’ did for me. It’s quite a feeling to be doing what I always wanted to do but never thought possible all those years ago…
That is my random thought for this Thursday; just wanted to share it with ya. Have a great day!
Excerpt and photo courtesy of National Geographic. You can read more about this photo and its story here.
