Summer in Florence will be dedicated to photography: the one hundred best portraits of the American photographer and photojournalist Steve McCurry, who has been active for about forty years, are on display at Villa Bardini from 15 June until 16 September.
The exhibition "Steve McCurry, icons" brings together the main shots of the photographer between war, poetry, irony, history and the travels that took him to India, Afghanistan, Burma, Japan, Brazil, Cuba.
The exhibition is curated by Biba Giaccatti, organized by Photodepartments and SudEst57 and promoted by the CR Firenze Foundation and the Bardini and Peyron Monumental Parks Foundation with the Municipality of Florence – Culture Department and the collaboration of Unicoop Firenze.
“With his photos, Steve McCurry puts us in contact with the most distant ethnic groups and with the most disparate social conditions – said the curator Biba Giaccatti – highlighting a human condition made up of universal feelings and gazes whose pride affirms the same dignity. With his photos, he allows us to cross borders and get to know a world that is destined for great changes up close. The exhibition begins with an extraordinary series of portraits and develops between images of war and poetry, suffering and joy, amazement and irony. These are his most loved images, collected in a sort of free journey that starts from large sections of portraits, tackles more serious themes, such as wars, 11/XNUMX, the monsoons and the earthquake in Japan, to then merge into rooms more reassuring that host more poetic images, taken from McCurry's great projects on spirituality and reading''.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is a portrait of Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed Afghan girl McCurry photographed in Peshawar refugee camp in Pakistan in 1984 and featured on the June cover of National Geographic the following year. The film, produced by National Geographic, which tells the story of the search for the Afghan girl 17 years later, is projected within the exhibition itinerary.
A room in Villa Bardini is dedicated to black and white images taken by a very young McCurry among the refugees overwhelmed by the coup in Afghanistan and which earned him international fame.
''We are honored to be able to host this event – declared the President of the Monumental Parks Foundation Bardini and Peyron Jacopo Speranza – also because this place has always cultivated a close link with photography. Traditionally it hosts photographic exhibitions that talk about places and cultures, such as Italia-Metafisica George Tatge, recently Luca Berti with the Norden exhibition. Today the 100 shots of 'Icons' represent a new opportunity to enhance this extraordinary artistic expression in a place that invites the visitor to capture moments of pure beauty. A real vocation to photography in every corner''.
