Although I left Paris to live my best life in sunny Nice, I have to admit that if there is one thing I miss terribly from my old Parisian life, it’s going to museums to see exhibitions of great artists (painter, photographer, sculptor, fashion designer..etc.). There are some famous museums in the south of France such as the Maeght foundation, the Matisse museum, the Picasso museum…, but it is not as good as the museums and exhibitions in Paris!
So I decided to propose you a new post more artistic, far from the sea and the palm trees of the French Riviera. Because at the beginning, it’s rather “from Paris to Nice ” to escape the greyness, but today, we’re flying back to the Capital to get some culture and not with just any exhibition! Indeed, during my last stay in Paris last December, I had the opportunity to go and see the incredible exhibition “Steve McCurry’s World by the famous American photographer Steve McCurry, a photo reporter known for having covered many conflict zones. And I can tell you that this exhibition made me travel like never before! The pictures are so beautiful and sharp that they look like paintings.
Its particularity is:
“The unexpected, the moment of controlled chance, which allows you to discover by accident interesting things that you were not looking for”
Steve MCCURRY
1. The World of Steve McCurry, a complete retrospective not to be missed
The exhibition offers a comprehensive retrospective of Steve McCurry’s photographs, highlighting moments of history, war, joy, and ephemeral moments of life from around the world. The main asset of this exhibition, in addition to the quality of the works, is that we are provided with an audio device to listen to the story of the most striking photos in the exhibition. The simple fact of listening to the photographer recontextualise the moment of the shot brings a deeply human and authentic side. Our brains start to work, we imagine, we visualise, we assume, we feel… This is what made this exhibition so successful.
Photography exhibition “The World of Steve McCurry” at the Musée Maillol, Paris 7
His photograph, which has become the most iconic in the history of photography, the one of the “young Afghan girl with green eyes” that travelled the world for National Geographic and became the emblem of a whole story, that of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1985 at the height of the Cold War. The girl’s name is actually Sherbat Gulla and her gaze will have left a mark on the minds of many people around the world with her piercing and hypnotic green eyes. The world will see the ravages of war through her face and photography will be thanked for its power to shake things up.
Sherbat Gulla, the Afghan woman with the piercing green eyes
3. A boat for the world tour
So you will travel the world through McCurry’s photographs, starting in Afghanistan, then passing through Tibet, Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Iraq, Jordan, South Africa… each of the photographs immortalizes both moments of atrocious history, such as when Saddam Hussein decided to burn the 700 oil wells during the Kuwait war, seeing the camels in agony, but also simple moments of one or several lives somewhere on Earth. This exhibition allows us to see the world and our own lives in a new light.
I came out of this exhibition quite moved. A flood of emotions in front of each picture, it was intense! It is said that an exhibition is successful when it touches the heart… for me, it hit me hard and I still can’t get over it…
Here is a selection of photos below:
4. More information on the exhibition “The World of Steve McCurry
Date: the exhibition is open until 29 May 2022 every day from 10.30 am to 6.30 pm (Wednesday until 10 pm)
Price: 15€ for adults – 14€ for seniors from 65 years old – 13€ for the reduced price
Location: Musée Maillol, 59-61 rue de Grenelle 75007 Paris
