The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Steve McCurry · a single colour photograph made in 1984 and published on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985 · a 35mm colour transparency · a girl, a refugee of the war in Afghanistan, unnamed at publication · the work scored is the single published frame, the 1985 cover image as printed and reproduced from the transparency; no single print is the work
Mode
Humanitarian documentary portrait for a picture magazine, made with the colour and finish of a studio portrait
Mythos
The frontal icon, the veiled young woman of devotional painting, the enigmatic face and the nameless witness who stands for a people: evoked by format and posture, not built
Phase
One instant of a sitting in 1984; published in June 1985; anonymous until 2002, when the sitter was found and named
Presentation
One upright frame from a 35mm colour transparency; no fixed print size; known chiefly as a reproduced image
Register
Arrest: a wary, measuring gaze with a cold edge, held still and not appealing for pity
Scale
One face at arm’s length; head and shoulders; no second figure and no sign of place
Governing Proposition
A girl’s face fills an upright frame: a worn red shawl with holes in it drawn over her head, a flat field of green behind her gone soft out of focus, and in the upper middle of the picture two pale green eyes that look straight into the lens. The wager of the frame is that one face, cut away from the war that made her a refugee, can carry the displaced to a reader who had known them only as an abstraction, that the look returned can turn the documentary photograph around and measure the one who looks, and that three colours held to one law can do the work a whole camp would have done in a wider frame.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Steve McCurry, an American photographer born in 1950, made the photograph in 1984 of a girl who was a refugee of the war in Afghanistan. It was published on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985, and the girl was not named. The title is Afghan Girl. In 2002 McCurry and a National Geographic team found her again and photographed her as an adult, and she was named as Sharbat Gula.
The work scored is the single published frame: the 1985 cover image, as printed and reproduced from a 35mm colour transparency. Print sizes vary by edition, and the work exists chiefly as a reproduced image; no single print is the work. The portrait of the adult woman made in 2002 is a separate photograph and is context. So is the story of the search and of her later life, which is weighed only where it bears on the survival or the reach of the image.
The frame is upright, head and shoulders, the face frontal and nearly centred, the eyes a little above the middle. The head is wrapped in a worn red-brown shawl with visible holes and frayed edges, and beneath it at the neck is a darker garment. Behind her is a flat field of green to blue-green, out of focus. There is no text in the image, no second figure and no sign of the place. The light is soft and even, without hard shadow, and the depth of field is shallow: the eyes are the plane of sharpest focus.
Movement II
The eyes are a pale sea-green, the irises ringed darker, and they look straight into the lens. That is the event of the picture. In the documentary photograph the subject is usually looked at and does not look back; here the one photographed sees the one photographing, and the viewer is measured. The look is wary, fixed and intense. It does not ask for pity. There is a cold edge in it, close to dread, in being met so directly by a child who has seen what the picture implies and does not show.
The elevation is of that one kind, the arrest of the gaze, and it comes at once and at any size: it did not fade in reproduction, which is part of why the image reproduced so well. It is struck once and sustained. There is no second register and no part of the frame that rises apart from the eyes, and some of the force is the sitter’s own rare colouring, a beauty she brought rather than a height the work achieved. The Sublime stands at 7.6, level with The Inevitable and The Inner Law.
The look is also the picture’s one order held from within. Consciousness is in the frame, fully and particularly; childhood is in her age, poverty in the holes of the shawl, custom in the head covering worn as everyday dress. War and the state are there only by implication. There is no family, no sacred order and no story within the frame, and The Encompassed, at 6.2, is the lowest of the twelve: a single cropped face leaves most of the world out, and what lifts the axis at all is that a person is in it.
Movement III
The palette is in effect three: the green of the eyes and of the ground, the red of the shawl, and the brown of skin and hair, with the red and the green complementary. That is the image’s law. The shawl frames the face and its colour makes the green of the eyes burn; the ground repeats the eyes; the skin mediates between them. The holes in the cloth keep the beauty tethered to poverty. Nothing in the frame breaks the law, but the field it governs is one face and three colours, and narrowness is not coherence. The Inner Law stands at 7.6.
The form carries the knowledge. In black and white the eyes would be merely pale and the charge of green against red would go, and with it most of the picture’s force: colour here is the instrument of the gaze. As a painting it would lose the photograph’s claim that this child exists and looked at this camera. Wider, with the place in view, it would become reportage, and the face one fact among many. What holds The Living Form at 7.4 is that the form is the standard head and shoulders portrait, used well rather than shaped to the content.
The making is precise where it counts. Focus is laid on the eyes at shallow depth, so that the irises are the sharpest thing in the frame; exposure is held for the darker skin without burning out the pale eyes or the red cloth, on a film with little latitude; the crop is tight and upright, the eyes high in the frame, the ground chosen to answer them. These are quick, skilled decisions, and they bear load. The means are conventional and the range is one setup, and much of what the picture has was found and secured rather than made: The Made stands at 7.8. Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, at 8.1, another face turned to meet the viewer, holds The Made at 9.2, because he made his light and surface.
Movement IV
What the picture brings into the open is real. For readers who knew the war in Afghanistan as a geopolitical abstraction, it met them with a particular child: the displaced are not a mass but persons, and the person photographed looks back. But the condition is carried almost wholly by a mood, and viewers have read the look as fear, defiance, accusation or trauma without the picture deciding among them. The war, the flight and the loss are not in the frame; they reach the viewer through the caption and the magazine. A face is disclosed; a condition is mostly told. The Unconcealment stands at 7.2.
Lange’s Migrant Mother, at 8.4, is the nearest of the posted works in kind, a humanitarian documentary portrait of a displaced woman, and it stands above this frame on every axis, widely on The Archetypal Deep, 8.7 against 7.3, and The Unconcealment, 8.6 against 7.2. Lange built her condition into the frame, in the children turned away, the hand at the mouth and the worn face; McCurry gives a face and leaves the condition to the caption. The archetypes here, the icon, the veiled young woman of devotional painting, the nameless witness, are evoked by format and posture and not built.
The inheritance is that portrait and its tradition, with the colour feature of the picture magazine and the frontal portrait of painting behind them. The departure is one of degree: a documentary subject given the saturated colour and finish of a studio or fashion portrait, so that the humanitarian photograph takes on the beauty of an advertisement. That fusion was already the house style of the magazine and of McCurry’s colour work, and the image succeeded on terms its publisher already rewarded. The Swerve stands at 6.6. And the image’s fame turned on its beauty, so that what it discloses is partly undone by what it makes desirable.
Movement V
The image has had two lives. From 1985 to 2002 it was an anonymous emblem, the nameless child standing for a people; from 2002 it was the portrait of a named woman, Sharbat Gula, whose later life in the news tested what the picture had seemed to promise for her. The search gave the picture a second myth, the lost one found, but that myth belongs to the story told about the image, not to the image. The frame itself did not change, and it survives whole, on the transparency and in innumerable reproductions. The Imperishable, at 8.6, is the highest of the twelve and the one axis to clear the Epochal Gate.
Its reach is broad and particular. It became the emblem of National Geographic itself, reprinted on its covers and in its anthologies as the magazine’s signature image. It set the template, followed in later photojournalism and in the fundraising imagery of aid organisations, for the single tightly cropped face of a child in need, meeting the lens. And it became the standing example in critiques of the Western humanitarian gaze, which have yielded a literature about the ethics of the picture and its aestheticising of suffering. That literature is about the image more than within it: return to the frame yields the eyes again, and the open question of what they mean.
Andreas Gursky’s Rhein II, a photograph of 1999 at 7.5, stands a tenth above it; the two are near level on Pressure on Tradition, 7.4 against 7.3. Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster, another emblematic face whose force is largely its circulation, stands a tenth below it at 7.3. The summit is closed to Afghan Girl at the Epochal Gate and the Universal Minimum, where six of its axes fall short of 7.5. The twelve sum to 88.2. It stands at 7.4, in Tier III.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test on a close portrait is short, because almost nothing is in it. Take away the shawl and its holes and the image loses its one mark of poverty and its one warm colour, and with them the complementary charge that sets the eyes alight. Take away the green ground and the eyes stop echoing their surroundings; on a grey wall it would be a colder face. Take away the slight forward tilt and the gaze and it becomes an identity photograph. Everything present bears load, and the frame leaves no idle margin. What holds the axis is that the necessity is that of a found moment, not a construction: a frame a fraction wider, or a second later, is easily imagined without loss.
Score: 7.6 / 10
What is brought into the open: the refugee of a war most Western readers of 1985 knew as a geopolitical abstraction, met as a particular child who returns the look. The displaced are not a mass but persons, and the one photographed sees the one photographing; the gaze reverses the usual direction of the documentary image, in which the subject is looked at and does not look back. That is real, and credited. What holds the axis well below the bar: the condition is carried almost wholly by a mood, the fixed, wary intensity of the eyes, read as fear, defiance, accusation or trauma without the picture deciding. The war, the flight and the loss are not in the frame; they come by caption. And the image’s fame turned on its beauty, so that what it discloses is partly undone by what it makes desirable.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The elevation is real and of one kind: the arrest of the gaze, met at once and at any size. The pale eyes against the dark skin and the red cloth carry an intensity that holds the viewer as few portraits do, and it does not fade in reproduction, which is part of why the image reproduced so well. It has a cold edge: the look does not ask for pity but measures, and there is something close to dread in being met so directly by a child who has seen what the picture implies. Against the axis, height and frequency: one effect, struck once and sustained, with no second register and no part of the frame that rises apart from the eyes. And part of the force is the striking colouring of the sitter, beauty she brought rather than height the work achieved.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The particular is fully particular: one girl, one shawl with its holes, one sitting. The archetypes summoned are several and strong. The frontal face with the direct gaze is the oldest form of the icon, the face that looks out from the panel; the shawl drawn over a young woman’s head recalls the Madonna of devotional painting; the unreadable look calls up the enigmatic face. Above all, the nameless witness: the anonymous child who stands for a people. The search of 2002 gave the picture a second myth, the lost one found, but that belongs to the story told about the image. Within the frame the archetypes are evoked by format and posture, not built: nothing organises the icon or the Madonna into a structure that bears weight.
Score: 7.3 / 10
The inheritance: the humanist documentary portrait, Lange’s Migrant Mother and the Farm Security Administration faces, the concerned photography of the postwar decades, the colour feature of the picture magazine, and behind them the frontal portrait of painting. The departure is small and mostly of degree: a documentary subject made in saturated colour with the finish of a studio or fashion portrait, the tight crop, the shallow focus, the complementary palette, so that the humanitarian photograph takes on the beauty of an advertisement. That fusion was already the house style of National Geographic and of McCurry’s colour work. No form was risked and no expectation broken; the image succeeded on terms its publisher already rewarded. A proven path sharpened, not a swerve.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Would a different form change what the work knows? Considerably. In black and white the eyes would be merely pale, and the charge of green against red would go, and with it most of the force: colour here is not added information but the instrument of the gaze. As a painting it would lose the photograph’s claim that this child exists and looked at this camera, which grounds everything it discloses and the later story of finding her. Wider, with the place in view, it would become reportage, and the face would be one fact among many; the tight crop turns a refugee into a presence. What holds the axis is that the form is a standard one, the head and shoulders portrait, used well rather than shaped to the content, and much of what the image knows survives at postage stamp size.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Evidence over promise, at about forty-two years. The image has drawn steady return, but most of it has been to questions about the picture rather than within it: the ethics of photographing a child, the charge that it exoticises and aestheticises suffering for a Western magazine, the market in its prints. Those questions are real and have yielded a literature. Within the frame, return yields the eyes again: what the look means stays open, and that ambiguity is a genuine reserve. But the picture does not reorganise on a second or a tenth viewing; there is no structure to discover and no detail that changes the whole. The depth of the debate is credited, and discounted for lying outside the image.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Published, so intrinsic force and achieved reach are scored together, in the field of documentary and magazine photography of the 1980s. Intrinsic force is modest: the picture does not reorganise what a photograph can do; it is a perfected instance of an existing kind, the colour humanitarian close portrait. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it became the emblem of National Geographic itself, reprinted on its covers and in its anthologies as the magazine’s own signature image; it set the template, followed in later photojournalism and in the fundraising imagery of aid organisations, for the single tightly cropped face of a child in need meeting the lens; and it is the standing example in critiques of the Western humanitarian gaze. Fame itself is presence and is not credited here. Reach broad, force slight.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at about forty-two years. Form: whole. The image is a single frame on a transparency and in innumerable prints and reproductions, and nothing of it is lost. Presence: as wide as that of any photograph of its decade, continuous since 1985, renewed by the portrait of 2002 and by the news of Sharbat Gula’s later life; but that width is largely fame, and fame lifts the figure only a little. Against it, the surface is to a degree fixed to its moment, a refugee of the Soviet war shown to a Cold War readership, and the ethical critique has changed how the picture is shown and received without taking it away. Fabric: the image is secured in reproduction.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Judged as command of colour photography in available light with a small camera. The making is precise where it counts: focus laid exactly on the eyes at shallow depth, so that the irises are the sharpest thing in the frame and the ground dissolves into a field of colour; exposure held for the darker skin while keeping the pale eyes and the red cloth from burning out, on a film with little latitude; soft, even light that models the face without hard shadow; the tight vertical crop with the eyes high in the frame; and a background whose colour answers the eyes. These are skilled decisions, made quickly, and they bear load. What holds the axis below 8: the means are conventional for the medium, the range is one setup, one face, one light, and much of the force is in what the sitter brought.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the frayed, holed shawl, the most worldly and particular thing in the image, and the eyes, the most inward. They obey one law, the complementary of red and green, and one register, the frontal encounter. The shawl frames the face and its colour makes the green of the eyes burn, while its holes keep the beauty tethered to poverty. The ground repeats the eyes; the skin mediates between them. Nothing in the frame contradicts the law: no tonal slip, no element that belongs to another picture. What holds the axis is that narrowness is not coherence. The territory is one face and three colours, and the law, once seen, governs a very small field, made coherent by a framing that excludes whatever might have tested it.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The orders held are few, and most by implication. Consciousness, in the gaze, held fully and particularly: the one order held from within. Childhood, in her age. Poverty, in the holes of the shawl. Custom and gender, in the head covering, worn as everyday dress. War and the state only by implication: the refugee and the absent country, with nothing of either in the frame. The relation the picture holds most strongly, the watched and the West that watches, is what the image does more than what it holds. No family, no sacred order, no story within the frame. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve, just above its floor, is that a single cropped face leaves out most of the world; what lifts it at all is that a person is in it. The figure describes the form.
Score: 6.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.6, then The Made at 7.8, then The Inevitable, The Sublime and The Inner Law at 7.6. A single frame whole on its transparency and in reproduction, with a presence continuous since 1985; focus, exposure and crop laid with precision on a face; a frame in which every element bears load; the arrest of a gaze met at any size; and one complementary law of red and green that governs shawl, eyes and ground.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.2: consciousness held in the gaze, and childhood, poverty and custom in the face and the cloth, with the war and the state only implied and most of the world left out of one cropped frame. Next above it, The Swerve at 6.6: the magazine’s established manner of colour humanitarian portraiture, sharpened at no stake. Then The Bottomless Well at 7.0: a deep debate about the image, discounted as external to it, and a frame with no structure to discover. Then The Unconcealment at 7.2: a face disclosed and a condition told by caption.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.6 against a threshold of 7.5, by a tenth. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.4, The Made at 7.8, The Inner Law at 7.6, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable at 8.6 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Archetypal Deep at 7.3, Pressure on Tradition at 7.3, The Unconcealment at 7.2 and The Swerve at 6.6 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Unconcealment, 7.2, The Archetypal Deep, 7.3, The Swerve, 6.6, The Living Form, 7.4, The Bottomless Well, 7.0, and Pressure on Tradition, 7.3, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.2. Three of the five summit conditions are met, the Necessity Cap, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The twelve sum to 88.2, an average of 7.35 that displays 7.4. The work stands where its aggregate places it: in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the image, one of the most reproduced photographs of its century, well known as an image and from its record; not from a print in hand. The work scored is the single published frame, the cover image of National Geographic for June 1985, as printed and reproduced from the 35mm colour transparency McCurry made in 1984; print sizes vary by edition and no single print is the work. Any other frames made at the same sitting are context and are not scored. The portrait of Sharbat Gula made in 2002, when McCurry and a National Geographic team found her again, is a separate photograph and context, and the story of the search and of her later life is weighed only where it bears on the survival or the reach of the image. No words are quoted; the title alone is given. The circumstances of the sitting, among them consent, the number of frames and how long it lasted, are known only from secondary report and are not given. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the name and place of the camp, the film stock, camera and lens, the girl’s age, the means by which her identity was confirmed in 2002, the events of her later life, her own reported account of being photographed, the frame in which she raises her shawl, what the background is, and later controversies over the photographer’s practice.