Iconic Photographs: The Afghan Girl
This image of a young Afghan girl (Sharbat Gula) was first shown on the front cover of National Geographic in 1985. The image has become widely known as one of the most famous photographs and is known by mostly everyone even if they don’t know the name or anything about the image.
This image was captured in 1984 by a Photographer named Steve McCurry using 35mm Film at a Pakistan Refugee Camp. National Geographic asked McCurry if he would travel to the Pakistani Camps at the border. At one of the camps there was a tent set up as a girls school where 15 girls were having lessons and as he was taking photographs of the other children he noticed Sharbat Gula due to her eyes. He recalled ““I spotted this young girl. She had an intense, haunted look, a really penetrating gaze – and yet she was only about twelve years old. She was very shy, and I thought if I photographed other children first she would be more likely to agree because at some point she wouldn’t want to be left out. I guess she was as curious about me as I was about her, because she had never been photographed and had probably never seen a camera. After a few moments she got up and walked away, but for an instant everything was right – the light, the background, the expression in her eyes.”
2018. Huxley-Parlour Gallery. [Online]. [3 October 2019]. Available from: https://huxleyparlour.com/the-afghan-girl/
The Afghan Girl has become such a known photograph that even without knowing it origin and who took the photograph etc. People still know this picture and can feel the emotion it is portraying.
Sharbat Gula now 45 (at the time of the published article) is living in a 3,000 square foot residence which has been decorated to her liking and paid for by the Afghan government, who also pay her a $700 per month stipend which covers living expenses and health care. The keys to her new home were given to her after 3 decades of being a refugee at a ceremony led by Afghan government officials.
2017. Nationalgeographiccom. [Online]. [3 October 2019]. Available from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/12/afghan-girl-home-afghanistan/
The Migrant Mother
This famous photograph titled “The Migrant Mother” was captured during the great depression of 1930’s by photographer Dorothea Lange. Lange was employed by the FSA (U.S. Governements Farm Security Administration) which was created during the Great Depression to raise awareness and to provide aid to the farms that became impoverished. While she was in Nipomo, California Lange stumbled upon Florence Owens Thompson and her 3 children in a camp that was filled with field workers after the failure of the pea crops. Lange later recalled her encouter with Thompson stating. “I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction.”1 One photograph from that shoot, now known as Migrant Mother, was widely circulated to magazines and newspapers and became a symbol of the plight of migrant farm workers during the Great Depression.”
She then went on to explain Thompson and her children’s living situation, saying that they were living on frozen vegetables and that they ate wild birds that the children caught. “The pea crop had frozen; there was no work. Yet they could not move on, for she had just sold the tires from the car to buy food.”
Thompson later in an interview in the 1970’s said that Lange’s remarks about her selling the tires from her car ,her children caught and ate wild birds was lies and that Lange either confused her for another farmer or was said to create a better story, Thompson also insisted that neither of them had spoken to each other.
Momaorg. 2019. Momaorg. [Online]. [3 October 2019]. Available from: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/dorothea-lange-migrant-mother-nipomo-california-1936/
Famous Film Directors
Kathryn Bigelow
Kathryn Bigelow is an American Director, Screen writer and producer who has covered many genres with her titles such as Near Dark, Point Break, Hurt Locker, Loveless and many more.
Wikipediaorg. 2019. Wikipediaorg. [Online]. [10 October 2019]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Bigelow
Kathryn was originally a painter and had spent two years at the San Francisco Art Institute. When she was twenty she won a scholarship for the Whitney Museum Independent
Banned Video Games
Manhunt and Manhunt 2:
The Manhunt games follow a man in a Hunger Games-esk type scenario
I'm a 90's Child... 