The power of the front cover | The impact of the front ...



1985: THE AFGHAN?GIRL (THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC) ?The girl?put face?to?the refugees? (Steve McCurry).Sales:?Unknown?-?Status:?Big image needed?-?Reliable sources?–?No reviewsCover of the National Geographic Magazine, June 1985. The covers?of?this magazine are?characterized?by?its large?main picture?and?yellow?edges.Plastic beauty is very important in the front cover, although the media usually prefers photos that provoke scandals. However, beauty also sells and gives prestige to a mass media. Perhaps the next cover contains the world's most famous photograph, on a par with Neil Armstrong’s stepping on the moon or the tragic atomic bomb.The most famous photo of the National Geographic Magazine the magazine was taken in June 1984 by Steve McCurry. McCurry was visiting the sprawling refugee camps along the Afghan-Pakistan border, and he chose a student around 12 years in a refugee camp of Nasir Bagh (in Peshawar, Pakistan). ?I went into a refugee camp, and I was kind of wandering through... and I saw this one particular girl who had this really kind of haunted look in her eye. So I got permission to photograph her?, McCurry said.?The girl lost her parents when she was very young and she moved from Afghanistan because of the Soviet invasion of December 1979 (the same that provoked the boycott of 50 countries led by the United States in the Moscow Olympic Games). All that mixture of sadness and fear was reflected in the afghan girl face, immortalized by one snapshot. As Steve McCurry told: ?Her look kind of summed up the horror, because her village had been bombed and her relatives had been killed, and she'd had to make this two-week trek through the mountains to the refugee camp?.Surprisingly, National Geographic's picture editor didn't want to put the picture on the cover, as it was too disturbing. Finally he relented the?image appeared?on?the front page of?National?Geographic?in?June?1985.?The intense?green eyes?of the girl?captivated?the world?and?the?cover?crossed the Earth, becoming certainly an icon for the magazine.?No?one knew?then?that girl?as?McCurry?did not report?his?name,?and?thereafter?was?known as the ‘Afghan girl’.Steve McCurry said recently: ?Once it was published on the cover of National Geographic we literally got thousands of letters. People willing to send her money, people wanted to adopt her, there were even men who wanted to find her and marry her. It just never let up over the 17 years?. The?image?became?a symbol?of the?Afghan conflict?and the?situation?of?refugees worldwide, and was named ‘the most recognized photograph’ in the history of the National Geographic.THE SEARCHING FOR THE AFGAN GIRL you can read the National Geographic’s article for the searching. years?later?Steve?McCurry?decided to?look for her, realizing?that?finding?was going to be difficult ?because refugees?move?from?side to side.?The?only?way?[to find her] involved?to return?to the same?place?. The photographer?came back to?the same?refugee camp in?Pakistan?with?the mission?to?locate her,?a certainly thorny situation due?to the dispersion of?housing?and?its maze-like situation.?False?rumors began to circulate telling that?she was dead,?she had?gone?to Canada,????or?even?she taught?English?to?Bin?Laden!!!McCurry?believed?that the afghan girl was Alam?Bibi,?in despite of the fact that?her eyes?were brown; an?iris?analysis?showed?that?Bibi was not?the famous covered?girl.?The?photographer had?to abandon the search,?but in?light?of a new?clue?the?National?Geographic?sent correspondent Boyd Matson XE “Madson, Boyd” to?Peshawar.?After?several?investigations?he achieved to identify?the?name of the afghan girl:?HYPERLINK ""Sharbat?Gula.?She was?a mother of?four?daughters?(although?one of them died after?birth)?and belonged?to the?Pashtun?ethnic group.?Matson?took?some pictures to?see if?she was?the girl?they were looking for.?The?National?Geographic ordered a?face recognition test and an?iris?comparison, and it was established that the images showed the same person.When?Steve?McCurry?knew the?results?he returned to?Pakistan?to meet her: ?There was no question in my mind that this was the girl. The eyes were the same, she had the same distinctive scar on her nose. All the facial features matched up. I instantly knew that this was the girl?. The above were the portraits (1984?& 2002)?used to identify the afghan girl by her iris patterns: Sharbat?Gula, whose?name?means "sweet drink". The?face on the right shows?the?hardships she has suffered at her thirties,?which even?seem to have made her lose some?sparkle in her?wonderful?eyes.That magnetic look of deep greenish eyes had turned off his light. The girl did not know the relevance that she had acquired with the picture taken by McCurry, and agreed to be new footage for another story. Sharbat?Gula even had never seen her famous portrait before it was shown to her in January 2003!The front page of April 2002 was dedicated to that new, and was the first time in 114 years that a person appeared 2 times in the National Geographic front cover. Subsequently the images recorded during the searching were edited for the documentary 'The Search for the Afghan girl. "The?front page?of the National?Geographic?that related the?story?(April 2002). This front cover created suspense? hiding?the face?of?Sharbat?to generate more?sales. The?newly?discovered?Afghan girl?poses?with?the cover?that?made her famous worldwide.RECOGNITIONMcCurry XE “McCurry, Steve” commented: ?I was very happy that several people called me, that they actually volunteered to go working Pakistan, to refugee camps, based on that picture? (Search for the Afghan Girl, 0:04:23). The?National Geographic Society?created?a fund to help?for the development?and education for?Afghan girls and women?in?collaboration?with local authorities and?nonprofit organizations.?The photo has also been widely used on?Amnesty International?brochures, posters, and calendars.?This?is?the?legacy of?the?'Mona Lisa?of the twentieth century’.A special edition of?the National?Geographic,?‘100?best?pictures'?with?the?famous?picture of the?enigmatic?green eyes?starring the?front cover. ................
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