Exhibitions
Steve McCurry and the gaze that transforms the world into memory
The Palau Martorell hosts ICONS, a retrospective that covers more than fifty years of humanist photography.
The eyes of the girl portrayed by Steve McCurry continue to traverse time with a force that is almost impossible to explain. Captured in a refugee camp in Pakistan in 1984, the image combines the simplicity of documentary portraiture with extraordinary emotional intensity: the direct gaze, the earthy tones, the worn red veil and the natural light build a visual icon that transcends photojournalism. More than a photograph, it is a universal symbol of human fragility in the face of war and displacement.
The Palau Martorell presents Steve McCurry, ICONS , a major retrospective dedicated to photojournalist Steve McCurry, open from May 15 to September 6. The exhibition brings together more than 150 photographs distributed across the three floors of the space and offers an intimate journey through more than five decades of career marked by the constant search for the human condition.
Steve McCurry, Beirut, Lebanon, 1982 ©Steve McCurry All rights reserved.
The exhibition, built on dark green walls and subdued lighting, creates an almost silent atmosphere that enhances the narrative power of each image. In McCurry's universe, photography becomes a language capable of telling stories without the need for words: a look, a gesture or a frozen moment can contain more emotion than any written story.
Among the most emblematic works is the portrait of Sharbat Gula, known worldwide as “the Afghan girl”. Captured in a refugee camp in Peshawar, the photograph has become a universal symbol of dignity, resistance and human fragility. But ICONS goes far beyond this iconic image: the exhibition unfolds everyday scenes from Asia, the Middle East and Africa, where children, anonymous faces and human landscapes build a visual story about survival, beauty and hope.
McCurry's work is characterized by a deeply empathetic gaze. His photographs not only document conflicts, poverty or displacement, but also reveal shared emotions that cross any cultural border: childhood, fear, curiosity or loss. The exhibition itinerary is thus articulated as an emotional geography where each portrait dialogues with the viewer and transforms individual experiences into collective memory.
Steve McCurry, Srinagar, Kashmir, 1995 ©Steve McCurry All rights reserved.
Throughout his career, McCurry has photographed wars, vulnerable communities and international crisis scenarios, but he has often done so by avoiding explicit violence. The exhibition is committed to “narrating by suggesting”: wounds are not always visible, but appear hinted at in a look, in the silence of a face or in the tension of a gesture. Thus, images of children playing with weapons or animals fleeing natural disasters evoke the latent presence of conflict without falling into the spectacle of pain.
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