"Afghan Girl" - Steve McCurry
This photo has always spoken to me. It's why I became a photographer. I had dreams of taking pictures like this. I found it as a child while browsing through one of my mother's National Geographic magazines. The story that accompanied it scared me when I first read it as at the time, I was the same as the girl in the photo when it was taken. She was twelve. She was a refugee in a tent on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, Soviet helicopters had destroyed her village and her family had been forced to make a two week trek through the mountains.
The look of sheer terror in the girls eyes grabbed my attention and held it as a child. Now as an adult, the photo still moves my heart. This is due to the fact that children in the area are still dealing with a war torn country. The photo still inspires me. The story does the same. National Geographic sent a team back to Afghanistan to do a follow up on "the girl with green eyes."
Here is what they found.
Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and
she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the
Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her
eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30.
No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a
place where no records exist.
The story continues here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text
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