National Geographic 'Afghan Girl' photographer in Barcelona exhibition

A YOUNG girl with haunting, bright-green eyes who graced the cover of National Geographic in 1985 is instantly recognisable – and the photographer behind it is set to host an exhibition at Barcelona's FotoNostrum centre in the Eixample district.

Steve McCurry's picture of 12-year-old Sharbat Gula, at a refugee camp with her siblings and grandparents in Pakistan, having fled their native Afghanistan amid the Soviet attacks in the neighbouring country, went viral – although Sharbat herself knew nothing about this until she was 29.

US-born McCurry managed to trace Sharbat again in 2002, where he found her once again in Afghanistan, in a rural village and living a 'traditional' life – married with three daughters.

FBI facial recognition technology and eye biometrics found the young woman in question to be a 99.99% match with the girl in the 1985 photo – no reading will ever give 100% - showing she was, beyond reasonable doubt, Sharbat Gula.

Nine years on, after the Taliban returned to power in summer 2021, Sharbat was one of millions who sought help to escape the country.

Since November 25, Sharbat, now 49, has been in Rome after the Italian government assisted her in getting out of Afghanistan.

McCurry, 72, will be bringing his Sharbat pictures, along with another few dozen taken between 1981 and 2019, to the brand-new and as-yet barely-used FotoNostrum centre, which he actually opened the same exhibition in on March 4, 2020.

It was short-lived, though, since on Friday, March 13 – the last working day before Spain went into full lockdown as a result of the pandemic – the display was shut to the public and packed up.

Now, residents in and visitors to the city will finally get the chance to see McCurry's Around the World in 80 Pictures collection, open until May 7, 2022 and featuring photos every bit as iconic as that of 12-year-old Sharbat's terrified expression on the magazine cover.

They include camels against a backdrop of a burning sky in Al-Ahmadi, Kuwait, and two bare-footed boys running after hula-hoops across arid African scrubland dotted with baobab trees.

“Photography is like a language. You communicate your vision, and your experiences,” McCurry explains.

He has chosen ordinary 'human' scenes from his collection, taken in Afghanistan, Brazil, Italy, Cuba, the USA, and south-east Asia, in particular, for the exhibition – and two very typical images from Barcelona itself.

One of them is, perhaps predictably, the terrace of the La Pedrera building, designed by Antoni Gaudí – the brains behind the unfinished and highly-unusual Sagrada Família cathedral – and another shows a human tower team, whose members, known as castellers, are forming a 'wheel' with their arms as 'spokes' – referred to as a pinya – as the base for their multi-storey 'body castle'.

McCurry took it from above, showing the network of intertwined arms and linked hands, because it was the angle 'he liked the most', according to the photographer in a video-conference interview ahead of the exhibition's opening.

Getting your hands on an original of McCurry's works means probably taking out a bank loan or even a remortggage – price tags range from €7,000 to €30,000, depending upon size – but just seeing them for yourself at the FotoNostrum centre, Barcelona's dedicated 'travelling' photographer and modern art museum, is expected to be free of charge or, at most, at a token cost of a few euros.