A lesson in authenticity from Steve McCurry

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“ Artificial intelligence will revolutionize photography, but there is a huge risk. It can create beautiful images, sure, but they will not be real. How can we trust a machine to understand emotions, the truth of a place?” says Steve McCurry, a legend of world photography, in Rome for a professional workshop with Eolo Perfido, who has combined the practice of photography with production and academia.

We meet at the end of six days of meetings that, as in the school of Athens, McCurry holds both in the studios of Perfido on the Casilina, a very pure Roman suburb, and in the streets of the center, precisely in peripatetic mode. He will hold another series of meetings in a month, on the site they are already sold out. Although he has opted for digital for over a decade, he has more than one fear regarding the next technological step. He recognizes the potential of artificial intelligence, but fears its ontological ambiguity: "You can't rely on a machine to tell the world. I read my favorite editorialist because I want his point of view, (not that of an algorithm)."

McCurry is seventy-four years old, and he speaks with the urgency of someone who has no time to waste . His approach to images has spanned the decades with the silent force of faces, glances, and minimal gestures. “The most important thing I’ve learned is respect for humanity, no matter what religion you practice, no matter where you were born. That alone would be enough to defuse conflicts,” he observes, with that apodictic predictability typical of the American view of the world and a taste for effect that probably comes from his studies, that degree in Theater and Cinematography obtained in 1974 in Philadelphia, a decade before the now all-too-famous image of the very young refugee from the Peshawar camp, the “Afghan girl” known at least as much as Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” “I was in the mountains of Pakistan escaping the hot Indian summer. Some Afghan refugees said to me: are you a photographer? You should come with us and tell our story.”

It seemed like an adventure. It was . They dressed him in a local tunic, dyed his hair, shaved him. His camera, a light backpack on his shoulders, and a lot of walking. He took his first photos in a conflict zone, bullets were flying from one side to the other. At Christmas 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. And those images, initially ignored, developed in black and white to supply the poor quality film made in the GDR, were suddenly contested by the most important world newspapers. Today, for an advertising-editorial project by Stefano Ricci, he has returned to India, one of the very rare fashion commissions he has accepted in recent years, he went to look for places and shots dear to him, in particular in Jodhpur. “We chose an elegant approach, respectful of the local culture. It was a pleasure to celebrate India, the architecture, the people. When you enter someone's home, you have to respect it” . After the one in Cambodia last year, the trip between Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh offered regal glimpses of the Florentine brand's garments.

McCurry doesn't just celebrate, he bears witness. Yes, haute couture, sometimes, under very specific conditions . But above all, wars, desperation, environmental violence, climate change, community resilience. Before others, with more colors than others. He makes it a work ethic: "Talent is important, but without perseverance it remains unfinished. You don't need to be a genius. You have to want to learn, to improve. To fail to learn again."

He wasn't supposed to be there, on September 11, 2001. Instead, a setback on his way back from Tibet had him stuck in New York. From the roof of his studio, he immortalized the Twin Towers in flames in front of him. "When the first one collapsed, I immediately thought: the second one will fall too. And I photographed it as it fell." He worked in a trance state, one shot after another. "It was as if my brain couldn't accept it. Then I went to Ground Zero." There he understood, once again, that stories call but don't wait for you. You have to go out and meet them, accepting all the risks. "If I had gone down to the street half an hour earlier, I could have died. A matter of seconds, maybe." Death doesn't scare him, but absence does. Since he became Lucia's father, eight years ago, his gaze has focused on other objectives. "Responsibility has arrived. You want your daughter to be prepared, to know how to fight for the right things you taught her."

And speaking of parenting and emotions, he talks about a video that moved him: a monkey, emergency cesarean, wakes up and finds her baby, holds it. “A mother who fears she has lost her little one. It was a very powerful moment. It almost made me cry”. He says he is convinced that he “knows” how “the animal kingdom” works, but that he is unaware of the entropic nature of the human being; for him, “a loose screw” to be tightened. Even in times of artificial intelligence, in the plural, this is the shot that McCurry would like to remain: that of respect, of testimony without judgment.

Technology at the service of man, never the other way around . Even in social media, which he uses without reserve, but with perhaps even greater caution than he reserves for photography: “They can be a wonderful tool or a great waste of time. (As with any medium) it depends on how you use it”. He has even managed to establish a peaceful relationship with his followers among whom, needless to say, haters and detractors thrive: “I partly ignore them, if I can I block them. People can say whatever they want, and often do so in an ignorant way. They talk about things they don’t know, with raw and hateful aggression. Sometimes I find myself wondering if they have nothing better to do in life (than attack me)” . Maybe not. “I would like to tell them to get up from their chair and do something useful. Wasting time like this means having an empty soul”. Literally, an empty soul. In the personal scale of values ​​of McCurry, who today finds himself living in spite of himself in a country where the president attacks opponents on social media and his privileged advisor from the day before yesterday, Elon Musk, “has interrupted programs on which human lives depended”, this is a mortal sin.

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