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How-To

The Unguarded Moment

Steve McCurry’s personal approach has created a career of stunning photographs of people from around the world

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Boy in midflight, The Unguarded Moment, 2009

It’s obvious at a glance that the cover of Steve McCurry’s new book, The Unguarded Moment (Phaidon), is a great photograph. The more you look at it, though, the more you find yourself drawn into it. You study it, wondering about the running boy caught midstride, midair. Where is he going? Why is he running? You consider the life he may lead, how he came to live in such a place. You shift your gaze to the handprints at the left of the frame. Who put them there? Are they entirely innocent or slightly sinister? The scene is unquestionably beautiful, but it also somehow raises as many questions as it answers. The moment is pure tension—a coiled spring on the verge of release—a consequence of the decisive moment.

McCurry’s photographs, often portraits that center on people amid their daily lives, tend to feel like the kind of images Henri Cartier-Bresson, pioneer of the “decisive moment,” would have produced had he worked in color. Perhaps that’s the most appropriate way to think about McCurry’s work, too, as it’s built on photography’s inherent ability to capture moments like the cover of his book.

Cluster of women during a dust storm, Rajasthan, India, 1983

“I’ve been in that town many times,” McCurry says of the image from Jodhpur, India, “and I know it very well. That particular street, that alleyway—I recognized all those hands on the wall, and there was a sort of simplicity to the design. It was a very busy alleyway. There were cows and women and workers and people with bicycles and motorcycles coming through that alleyway. I took a number of pictures, many of which are fine. It’s just a question of working and waiting for something to come into your frame that will complete the picture.”

If he makes it sound simple, it’s because, to McCurry, the process is inherently so. He seeks simplicity in every aspect of his photography—from the equipment to the technique to the way he finds and engages with his subjects. Simplicity may be his guiding principle, second only perhaps to human interaction and interpersonal connection.

“When you’re out shooting, it’s not just about the pictures,” McCurry says. “It’s also about enjoying your afternoon, or the people you’re photographing, the places you’re photographing. A lot of times when I’m walking down the street, I’ll talk to people—maybe this seems so obvious—I’ll talk to people that don’t even have anything to do with photography. You’re out trying to experience the place. I guess it’s so fundamental, so basic, but I notice sometimes that gets overlooked. For me, photography is more about wandering and exploring, human stories, unusual serendipitous moments that make some interesting comment about life on this planet.”

McCurry frequently refers to his photographic role as that of the wanderer. While his images represent a perfect storm of composition, lighting, color, human emotion, decisive moment and perhaps any number of additional intangible qualities, he says he’s not particularly conscious of them. His focus is much simpler.

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