|
Posted on 03/13/2002 10:15:56 AM PST by ThePythonicCow
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For nearly two decades, National Geographic (news - web sites) has been flooded with requests for information about a beautiful Afghan teen-ager with piercing green eyes whose cover image became one of its most recognized photographs.
|
|
"Every time I went there (to Afghanistan or Pakistan), I asked about her, but I never had any leads," freelance photographer Steve McCurry, who took the picture for National Geographic in 1984, told Reuters.
McCurry says hardly a day has gone by that people have not asked him about the young woman, whose name he did not take down when he took her picture for the January 1985 cover of National Geographic.
This January, he returned with a National Geographic team to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan where he took the picture and found someone who said he grew up with the woman's brother.
"The refugee camp was set to close and so I knew this was my only chance to find her," said McCurry. "I couldn't believe it when the brother finally turned up with his sister. I knew immediately it was her."
The woman, who is now about 30 years old, was identified as Sharbat Gula. She remembered McCurry taking the picture but had never seen a copy of it and was surprised and embarrassed by all the attention it attracted.
Gula got married shortly after McCurry first saw her and had four daughters, one of whom died in infancy. She was repatriated from the camp in 1992 and returned to Afghanistan with her family.
Her life had been tough in Afghanistan and McCurry said she had struggled to survive.
"What the second picture shows is that she is still alive and survived quite well in fact ... but that pain and hardship is still written in her face. It is not a face of joy," he added.
NEW PHOTOS TAKEN
A conservative Pashtun, Gula sought her husband's permission to lift her veil to show her face for the latest photographs, which appear in National Geographic's April edition.
McCurry said he saw Gula as a representative of the plight of the Afghan people, who endured an extended war with the Soviet Union and the rise and fall of the Taliban.
"She's really emblematic of the Afghan spirit," he said, adding that a education fund had been set up by National Geographic for young Afghan girls.
National Geographic used several scientific methods to ensure they had found the right woman, including iris recognition in which the colored portion of the eye is examined.
No two human irises are the same and a direct match holds a near 100 percent probability of authenticity, National Geographic said. The woman's eyes were found to be a perfect match.
 |
| Sharbat Gula, who captivated audiences with her haunting green eyes when she appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985, is seen in the magazine's 1985 cover photograph (L), and today (R), 17 years later. The story of her life and how she was located after nearly two decades is featured in the April issue of National Geographic magazine. Photo by National Geographic Society/Reuters |
The years have not been kind.
What you call nasty and check out her mother, is a hard life as a refugee in one of the most inhabitable and war torn places on earth.
LOL, ain't that the truth
Precisely why I don't subscribe
And I suppose the older you get, the more often you are mistaken for Russell Crowe, right?
The Afghans are not a worthless people. They are grateful that we are there. They know that without our help that they are hopeless. It is NOT the Aghans who attacked America, it was Al Queda. Most of Al Queda is not Afghan, but they flourished in Afghanistan because they have no central government and the Taliban received money to harbor terrorists.
I beg to differ.
and that is the most famous National Geographic cover in history
Which is why I don't subscribe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
