{"id":65644,"date":"2025-08-07T17:49:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T17:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/65644\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T17:49:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T17:49:05","slug":"steve-mccurry-abruptly-ends-interview-over-old-photoshop-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/65644\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve McCurry Abruptly Ends Interview Over Old Photoshop Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An<\/a>Steve McCurry in 2024. Photo by Christopher Michael \/ Wikipedia<\/a> <\/p>\n

Famous photographer Steve McCurry \u2014 who shot Afghan Girl \u2014 got prickly with a reporter this week after he was pressed on his 2016 Photoshop scandal. <\/p>\n

McCurry walked out of the interview that was being conducted by El Pa\u00eds , considered to be a newspaper of record in Spain. It started badly when the writer, Manuel Morales, asked McCurry why his photos \u201cportray people who are suffering,\u201d in photographs that are \u201caesthetic.\u201d McCurry called it a trick question. <\/p>\n

\u201cI object to the manipulation of suggesting that somehow I\u2019m trying to beautify human suffering,\u201d McCurry replied. \u201cIt\u2019s totally legitimate for an artist or a photographer to document the world as it is, and whatever the human emotion is \u2014 joy, happiness, suffering, sadness.\u201d<\/p>\n

But things got much worse when Morales brought up the infamous 2016 Photoshop scandal. \u201cThis is old news, man. I\u2019m not going to get into that,\u201d McCurry said as he got up to leave. <\/p>\n

According to the full transcript<\/a> of the awkward exchange published by El Pais, McCurry then called the reporter a \u201clazy man\u201d and accused him of \u201ctrying to trip me into some bulls***.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, I think you should put the whole interview into the trash can and just leave it like that,\u201d McCurry says. Morales writes that McCurry \u201cdoes have a reputation\u201d for being difficult in interviews.<\/p>\n

Steve McCurry Photoshop Scandal <\/p>\n

Back in 2016, PetaPixel reported<\/a> that the Magnum photographer\u2019s questionable use of Photoshop came to light after photographer Paolo Viglione went to McCurry\u2019s show in Italy and noticed editing mistakes on one of the prints. <\/p>\n

That led to a wider examination of McCurry\u2019s work<\/a> which found more examples of Photoshop misuse, including liberal use of the cloning tool to remove objects and even people from some of his documentary shots. <\/p>\n

McCurry defended himself, telling PetaPixel that he defines his work as \u201cvisual storytelling\u201d and distancing himself from the photojournalist label. But he later said that he will \u201crein in his use of Photoshop.\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n

Despite the drama, McCurry will forever be known as the photographer who shot Afghan Girl, the most famous Nat Geo cover of all time. The portrait of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan during the Soviet\u2013Afghan War, led to an early 2000s search for her and was eventually tracked down in Afghanistan\u2019s Nangarhar Province. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve McCurry in 2024. Photo by Christopher Michael \/ Wikipedia Famous photographer Steve McCurry \u2014 who shot Afghan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[48257,228,226,227,229,88,18783,3381,32870,48258],"class_list":{"0":"post-65644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-afghangirl","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ethics","15":"tag-interview","16":"tag-photoshop","17":"tag-steve-mccurry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}