‘Steve McCurry Icons’ in Sansepolcro

The best still images of the great photographer on show at the Civic Museum

From 28 June 2017 to 05 November 2017

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When talking about contemporary photography, our mind immediately goes to the great Steve McCurry who, after nearly forty years of career, has become a reference point for the vast audience who follows him thanks to his innate ability to look at our time.

The exhibition 'Steve McCurry Icons', housed at the Civic Sansepolcro Museum and open to the public until 5th November, 2017, highlights various aspects of his activity. Displayed is the best selection from his long-standing career: 100 images that will plunge you into Steve McCurry’s world, a journey through experiences and emotions that best exemplify Steve McCurry photography.

STEVE MCCURRY EXHIBITION. In this unmissable show in Arezzo 2017 - Sansepolcro, you can admire the best from Steve McCurry photos, starting with the only black and white ones, taken between 1979 and 1980 in Afghanistan, where Steve McCurry joined the Mujahedeen in their fight against the Soviet invasion. From this suffering country is also hailing another masterpiece by Steve McCurry: 'Afghan girl', a beautiful photo shot at Sharbat Gula in the Peshawar refugee camp in Pakistan in 1984. Mccurry Afghan Girl with her green eyes, ranked amongst the undisputed icons of world-renowned photography, was also chosen as the cover of the National Geograpchic Magazine (June 1985).

Mccurry photo exhibition at Sansepolco Museum will reveal the world of the most remote ethnic groups and cultures: from Brazil to Japan, Africa to India and Burma. A series of shots that are radiating human traits and universal feelings in a crescendo of emotions and that will allow you to cross borders and closely observe a new world, destined for big changes.

McCurry's exhibition path begins with a wonderful series of portraits and develops among images of wonder and irony, suffering and joy, war and poetry. To capture the essence of McCurry's photos, an audio guide will be available free of charge, where the reporter talks first-hand about the exhibited images.

Steve McCurry exhibition 2017will be enriched by the screening of three videos, starting with one dedicated to the images of his first reportage in Afghanistan. In the second, Steve McCurry photographer talks about his vision of photography and his countless experiences. The last film, however, made by National Geographic, traces the long search that allowed the American reporter Steve Mccurry to find the 'Afghan girl' 17 years after the famous shot.

In the final section of the exhibition, you can buy 'Icons - Steve McCurry', a publication edited by Biba Giacchetti, which is the catalogue of the exhibition.

STEVE McCURRY - PHOTOGRAPHER. Born in the suburbs of Philadelphia, he began his career in India. After several months of travelling, he found himself at the border with Pakistan where he met a group of Afghan refugees who smuggled him into their country, despite borders had been closed to all Western journalists by the Russian Army. Wearing traditional clothes and sporting a thick beard, McCurry spent three weeks alongside the Mujahidin, disguising himself among the local population and thus presenting the world with the first images of the conflict in Afghanistan. From that moment on, he began his rise to fame, sustained by breath-taking shots exposing wars, ancient traditions, cultures destined to disappear and modern cultures, always centering his every image on the human factor.

Thanks to his photographs, McCurry has won some of the most prestigious awards of photography including the Robert Capa Gold Medal, the coveted National Press Photographers award, to name a few, in addition to receiving four first World Competition Press Photo prizes.

LOCATION. Mccurry at Sansepolcro Museum, the location of McCurry's photo exhibition, deserves a few words. Set up around 1920 as an art gallery, the museum’s rich art collection had begun long before. With the aim to decorate and embellish the Municipal Palace, the city government had, already in the sixteenth century, commissioned works and art pieces to great artists starting with Piero della Francesca’s 'Resurrection', which decorates the Conservatory Hall of the Palace della Residenza. Around the mid-16th century, works by Raffaellino del Colle and Leonardo Cungi were acquired. The Venice-hailed Bassani were also called to decorate the Chapel della Residenza. Subsequently, the famous engravings by Cherubino Alberti and San Ludovico from Palazzo Pretorio were annexed, while in 1901 the paintings originally housed in the Church of Santa Chiara and Sant'Agostino were included in the Art Gallery together with the polyptych “Our Lady of Mercy”.

In the last twenty years, Sansepolcro has seen the rise of a deep conservation movement, encouraged by the discovery, and the subsequent housing in the museum rooms, of ‘St. Julian’ by Piero della Francesca, frescoed between 1454 and 1458.

After the expansion of the exhibition house, the current Museum was inaugurated in 1975 thanks to the valuable collaboration between the City of Sansepolcro, the Region Authority of Tuscany and the Superintendence of Arezzo. 

Among the Photo exhibitions in Tuscany do not miss Steve McCurry's 'Icons', exciting photos to discover far-away worlds. Do not miss one of most important events near Arezzo in 2017, you have time until 5th November! The exhibition of Steve McCurry in Italy is also exhibited in parallel in Syracuse at the former convent of Saint Francis of Assisi.