"In the Shadow of Mountains"
by Steve McCurry

My first encounter with photographer Steve McCurry, unknown to me, came when I gazed at the cover of a 1985 National Geographic and it gazed back at me with green, knowledgeable eyes that followed me wherever I moved. It was the soon-to-be-famous "Afghan Girl" cover -- an iconic image showing both fear and beauty, betraying the unseen scars of war upon her homeland visible inside her glowing eyes and smudged face.

McCurry's latest book "In the Shadow of Mountains" is a monograph documenting his 27 years photographing Afghanistan. Within its beautiful cover splendid landscapes, slow street scenes and dignified portraits -- the piercing portraits -- artfully pop from the pages.

Whether described in terms of art or the jargon of photojournalism, the photographs betray an intuitive, perhaps harmonic, connection between McCurry and the ever-changing country.

His comfort with the people and the land is evident at every turn of the page, visible in the actions, and sometimes inertia, of daily life that fall in front of his lens. The tumultuous culture is on display, in various forms and permutations, altering as leadership changed and various forms of control exerted upon the people and the land .

The images are powerful and through simplicity gain more weight. McCurry is spare in his vision, even with a complicated composition. There may be a lot going on in a picture of an Afghan fighter relaxing, shoes neatly set nearby in a shattered landscape. But the red couch on which he reclines causes all the visual confusion, including the not-so-distant past and damaged present -- to quickly accrete into a vision of common peace in a hostile environment.

A similar photograph of a class taking place in a ruined building, set among more bomb-battered ruins, is jarring on its own. Add the unspoken fact people are trying to live and continue with life in these conditions the mind can spin. The chalkboard is similar to the red couch, a common element amid the wildly damaged landscape, causing familiarity to calm the setting.

Powerful. Exciting. Sad. Harrowing. These words can describe many of the images -- often at the same time. A truly superb tome worthy of placement on any bookshelf. It might be the best of his many books and is probably home to the best reproduction. A keeper.