Steve McCurry, the world-famous photographer behind National Geographic's iconic "Afghan Girl" cover, abruptly walked out of an interview this week when a Spanish journalist pressed him about his controversial use of Photoshop that made headlines in 2016. The tense exchange occurred during an interview with El País, Spain's newspaper of record, and quickly escalated from uncomfortable to hostile.
The interview began on a difficult note when journalist Manuel Morales questioned McCurry about the aesthetic nature of his photographs depicting human suffering. McCurry immediately bristled at the line of questioning, calling it a "trick question" and defending his artistic approach. "I object to the manipulation of suggesting that somehow I'm trying to beautify human suffering," McCurry responded. "It's totally legitimate for an artist or a photographer to document the world as it is, and whatever the human emotion is – joy, happiness, suffering, sadness."
However, the situation deteriorated rapidly when Morales brought up McCurry's infamous 2016 Photoshop scandal. The photographer's reaction was immediate and defensive. "This is old news, man. I'm not going to get into that," McCurry said as he stood up to leave the interview. According to the full transcript published by El País, McCurry then launched into a verbal attack on the journalist, calling him "a lazy man" and accusing him of trying to "trip me into some bullsh*t."
Before storming out completely, McCurry delivered a final dismissive comment to the reporter: "Honestly, I think you should put the whole interview into the trash can and just leave it like that." The journalist noted in his article that McCurry has developed a reputation for being difficult and confrontational during interviews, suggesting this wasn't an isolated incident.
The 2016 Photoshop scandal that triggered McCurry's angry departure originally came to light when photographer Paolo Viglione attended one of McCurry's exhibitions in Italy and noticed obvious editing mistakes on printed photographs. This discovery led to a broader investigation into McCurry's work, which revealed extensive and questionable use of digital manipulation tools. The examination uncovered multiple instances where McCurry had used Photoshop's cloning tool to remove objects and even people from what were supposed to be documentary photographs.
When the scandal first broke, McCurry initially defended his practices by redefining his work as "visual storytelling" rather than traditional photojournalism, attempting to distance himself from the stricter ethical standards expected of documentary photographers. However, facing mounting criticism from the photography community and media outlets, he eventually promised to "rein in his use of Photoshop" in future work.
Despite the controversy and his reputation for difficult interviews, McCurry's legacy remains largely defined by his most famous photograph – the piercing green-eyed "Afghan Girl" that became National Geographic's most recognizable cover image of all time. The portrait captured Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee living in Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan War, and later sparked an international search effort in the early 2000s that successfully tracked her down in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province. This iconic image continues to overshadow the technical and ethical controversies that have followed McCurry throughout his later career.
