Tag: Burma

Rhapsody in Blue

Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here and there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

– Robert Frost

I have found myself dwelling on the color blue and the way our planet’s elemental hue, the most symphonic of the colors, recurs throughout our literature as something larger than a mere chromatic phenomenon — a symbol, a state of being, a foothold to the most lyrical and transcendent heights of the imagination.

– Maria Popova

“Blue is light seen through a veil.”

– Henry David Thoreau

“Blue is the typical heavenly color…
The ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest…”

– Wasily Kandinski

“I saw in a blue haze all the world poured
flat and pale between the mountains.”

– Annie Dillard

“We love to contemplate blue,” Goethe wrote, “not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it.”

Blue is the unspoken language of universality,
seamlessly weaving through the expanse of
sky and the depths of water.

“No water, no life. No blue, no green”

– Sylvia Earle

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E X H I B I T I O N S

STEVE McCURRY : THE ENDLESS TRAVELER

Peter Fetterman Gallery
Santa Monica, CA

Sat, Jan 27, 2024 – Sat, Apr 27, 2024

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ICONS

Seaworks Maritime Precinct
The Main Shed
Melbourne, Australia

Wed, Feb 28, 2024 – Sun, May 26, 2024

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NEW BOOK
D E V O T I O N

Reproduced in stunning color, these photographs honor the universal desire to create meaning in the midst of everyday life and offer viewers an opportunity to connect with their own spirituality—whatever form that takes.

More about Devotion here –
https://www.stevemccurry.com/news/steve-mccurry-presents-devotion

Uncategorized

The Power of Red

Red has always been my color
because red stands out.
Red is one of the strongest colors, its blood,
it has a power with the eye.
That’s why traffic lights are red I guess, and stop signs as well…
In fact, I use red in all of my paintings.
– Keith Haring

Red is the greatest clarifier – bright and revealing. I can’t imagine becoming bored with red – it would be like becoming
bored with the person you love.
– Diana Vreeland

Red is uplifting.
– J. Lewis

Red protects itself. No color is as territorial.
It stakes a claim, is on the alert against the spectrum.
~ Derek Jarman

When I haven’t any blue, I use red.
– Pablo Picasso

I love red so much,
I almost want to paint everything red.
– Alexander Calder

Red, of course, is the color of the interior of our bodies.
In a way it’s inside out, red.
– Anish Kapoor

Red is the ultimate cure for sadness.
– Bill Blass

Red can communicate all sorts of messages.
Red symbolizes passion, action, energy, happiness,
authority, strength, and confidence…
– Adam Glassman
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E X H I B I T I O N S

ICONS

Loyola University Museum of Art
Chicago, IL, USA

Fri, Oct 20, 2023 – Wed, Mar 27, 2024

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ICONS

Arsenali Repubblicani
Pisa, Italy

Mon, Jan 1, 2024 – Sun, Apr 7, 2024

___

STEVE McCURRY : THE ENDLESS TRAVELER

Peter Fetterman Gallery
Santa Monica, CA

Sat, Jan 27, 2024 – Sat, Apr 27, 2024

___

STEVE McCURRY

Cavalier Galleries
New York, NY

Thu, Feb 8, 2024 – Sat, Mar 30, 2024

___

ICONS

Seaworks Maritime Precinct
The Main Shed
Melbourne, Australia

Wed, Feb 28, 2024 – Sun, May 26, 2024

___________________________________

NEW BOOK
D E V O T I O N

More about Devotion here –
https://www.stevemccurry.com/news/steve-mccurry-presents-devotion

Uncategorized

Portraits of Friendship

“Wherever we are, it is our friends
that make our world.”
– Henry Drummond

“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny, and a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over.”
– Gloria Naylor

“True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must
undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity,
before it is entitled to the appellation.”
– George Washington

“What is a friend?
A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
– Aristotle

“Hold a true friend with both your hands.”
– Nigerian Proverb

“ We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed.
As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at
last a drop which makes it run over;
so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one
which makes the heart run over.”
– Samuel Johnson

“Friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.”
– Aristotle

“Faithful friends are hard to find.”
– William Shakespeare

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand,
not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship.
It is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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NEW BOOK
D E V O T I O N

This powerful collection of images is collected from the entirety of McCurry’s forty-year career traveling to every corner of the globe. From a mosque in Afghanistan to Burma’s Golden Rock; an Easter offering in Paraguay to an elderly couple at Lourdes; a Tibetan monk in India to evangelicals in America’s heartland.
McCurry captures penetrating moments of devotion, loyalty, faithfulness, and dedication.
Reproduced in stunning color, these photographs honor the universal desire to create meaning in the midst of everyday life and offer viewers an opportunity to connect with their own spirituality—whatever form that takes.

More about Devotion here –
https://www.stevemccurry.com/news/steve-mccurry-presents-devotion

_______________________________

Poster Sales fund ImagineAsia’s initiatives in
Afghanistan and Ukraine.
https://www.stevemccurry.com/posters

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EXHIBITIONS

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ICONS

Loyola University Museum of Art
Chicago, IL, USA

Fri, Oct 20, 2023 – Thu, Feb 1, 2024

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CHILDREN

Palazzo Ducale
Paris, France

Sat, Nov 25, 2023 – Sun, Mar 10, 2024

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ICONS

Arsenali Repubblicani
Pisa, Italy

Mon, Jan 1, 2024 – Sun, Apr 7, 2024

___

STEVE McCURRY : THE ENDLESS TRAVELER

Peter Fetterman Gallery
Santa Monica, CA

Sat, Jan 27, 2024 – Sat, Apr 27, 2024

___

STEVE McCURRY

Cavalier Galleries
New York, NY, USA

Thu, Feb 8, 2024 Sat, Mar 9, 2024

Uncategorized

Upstairs, Downstairs

Burma

For centuries, stairs have symbolized journeys, rites of passage,
transitions, and stages of life in art, literature, and music.

Tibet

My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
‘Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul
– William Butler Yeats

Italy

Stairs are climbed step by step.
– Turkish Proverb

Kashmir

Children’s stories tell tales of boys and girls discovering treasures upstairs in the attic and fearing what is downstairs in the basement.

Afghanistan

Faith is taking the first step even when
you don’t see the whole staircase.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Burma

Morocco

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe,
grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts,
emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
– John Steinbeck

Jodhpur, India

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be
through Earth’s loveliness.
– Michelangelo

Italy

Mt. Popa, Burma
The stairway climbs a 300-foot lava plug crowned by Buddhist temples.

Serbia

Mother to Son
Well, Son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor —
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now —
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
– Langston Hughes

New York, September 12, 2001

Japan

New York

Halfway down the stairs
is a stair
where i sit.
there isn’t any
other stair
quite like
it.
i’m not at the bottom,
i’m not at the top;
so this is the stair
where
I always
stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn’t up
And it isn’t down.
It isn’t in the nursery,
It isn’t in town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
It isn’t really
Anywhere!
It’s somewhere else
Instead!
– A.A. Milne

Italy

Haiku
Steep steps
Uneven treads
Life
– bmv

India

Iraq

Afghanistan

Check out linktr.ee/stevemccurry to see what we’ve been up to!

Tags A.A.Milne, Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, India, Iraq, Italy, John Steinbeck, Jr., Kashmir, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King, Michaelangelo, Mt. Popa, New York, September 11, Serbia, William Butler Yeats

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Eloquence of the Eye

The soul has an interpreter – often an unconscious
but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.
– Charlotte Bronte

Her eyes are homes of silent prayers.
– Lord Alfred Tennyson

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye,
one seeing, one knowing, one love.
– Meister Eckhart, 1259 – 1327

These eyes tell the stories of
children around the world.
They speak of war, deprivation, and loss.

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain and nourish all the world.
– William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost

There is a road from the eye to heart
that does not go through the intellect.
– G. K. Chesterton

When the heart is full, the eyes overflow.
– Sholom Aleichem

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
-Henri Bergson

The eyes are the most powerful social signalers that we have and hence are sometimes called the windows of the soul.
– Glen Wilson

Eyes are more accurate witnesses than ears.
– Heraclitus of Ephesus, 535 – c. 475 BCE

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
– Henry David Thoreau

Eyes have their own universal language, and
no interpreter is needed.

The countenance is the portrait of the soul,
and the eyes mark its intentions.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 – 43 BCE

The face is the mirror of the mind,
and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.
– St. Jerome

Please check out linktr.ee/stevemccurry to see what’s new
at Steve McCurry Studios.

My new book, In Search of Elsewhere, will be released this fall in five language editions. Click here to pre-order.

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Geometry of Joy

Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
– Leo Tolstoy

And Joy is Everywhere;
It is in the Earth’s green covering of grass;
In the blue serenity of the Sky;
In the reckless exuberance of Spring;
In the severe abstinence of gray Winter;
In the Living flesh that animates our bodily frame;
In the perfect poise of the Human figure, noble and upright;
In Living;
In the exercise of all our powers;
In the acquisition of Knowledge;
in fighting evils…
Joy is there Everywhere.
– Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning,
as if supported by the rays of the sun,
a bird settled on the fire escape,
joy in the task of coffee,
joy accompanied me as I walked.
– Anais Nin

There is no greater joy nor greater reward than to make a fundamental difference in someone’s life.
– Sr. Mary Rose McGeady

Shared joy is a double joy
-Swedish Proverb

To get the full value of a joy you must have
somebody to divide it with.
– Mark Twain

Find ecstasy in life;
the mere sense of living is joy enough.
– Emily Dickinson

Joy is not in things;
it is in us.
– Richard Wagner

Joy is the serenity of heaven.
– John Donne

We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
but we can choose to live in joy.
– Joseph Campbell

My mind to me a kingdom is,
such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
– Sir Edward Dyer
1543 – 1607

When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
– Rumi, 1207-1273

In time of care and sorrow, keep a
fountain of joy alive in you.
– Dietrich Bonhoffer

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Please visit Steve’s website to place an order for a poster!

To place an order click on ‘Continental U.S.’ or ‘International’, whichever applies to your shipment destination.

https://stevemccurry.com/posters

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Every Day is Mothers’ Day

Post author By Steve McCurry
Post date May 5, 2020
39 Comments on Every Day is Mothers’ Day

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.
– Robert Browning

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?
– Mahatma Gandhi

All that I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
– Abraham Lincoln

Mother is the name for God in the lips
and hearts of little children.
– William Makepeace Thackeray

Mother: the most beautiful word
on the lips of mankind.
—Kahlil Gibran

Artists have been depicting the special bond between mothers and their children for hundreds of years.

Relationships can be difficult to describe, and sometimes an image tells the story better than words. One of the most powerful and unforgettable photos depicting a mother and her children in the history of photography is Dorothea Lange’s photograph of a destitute mother and her children taken in 1936.

Dorothea Lange said in an interview about the picture, “She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me.”

“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law…
– Agatha Christie

Doris Mae Stevens McCurry holding Steve, Baltimore, MD

Music: Reverie by Scott Buckley

Tags Afghanistan, Benin Tagong, Burma, China, Cuba, Dorothea Lange, Germany, Havana, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Kabul, Kahil Gibran, Kamdesh, Kashmir, Kham, Lhasa, Mahatma Gandhi, mali, Mexico, Mississippi, Moscow, Mumbai, Myanmar, Oaxaca, Robert Browning, Russia, Rybinsk, Sahel, Sonnet 3, Srinagar, Tagong, Tibet, Tokyo, USA, William Makepeace Thackeray, William Shakespeare

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The Lives We Live

The doors we open and close each day decide
the lives we live.
– Flora Whittemore

Doors Are both frame and monument
To our spent time, And too little Has been said Of our coming through and leaving by them.
– Charles Tomlinson

Since the beginning of time,
doors have symbolized both great opportunities and thwarted dreams. The open door is a metaphor for new life, a passage from one stage of life to another, and metamorphosis. Closed doors often represent rejection and exclusion.

O god of hinges, god of long voyages, you have kept faith.
It’s dark in there. You confide yourself to the darkness
You step in.The door swings closed.
– Margaret Atwood

It’s doors I’m afraid of because I can’t see through them.
Its the door opening by itself in the wind I’m afraid of.
– Margaret Atwood, Surfacing

The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort – the opening terror. Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing. The opening a wonderfully joyous moment.
– Andrew Rooney

A door just opened on a street– I, lost, was passing by–
An instant’s width of warmth disclosed And wealth, and company. The door as sudden shut, and I, I, lost, was passing by, Lost doubly, but by contrast most, Enlightening misery.
– Emily Dickinson