Steve McCurry
Animals

The first time I saw him was at a future tournament in Trento, my city. In the early months of 2019, and that shy, skinny kid wasn't even of age, and no one knew him: he was ranked 550 in the world. A machine that first scrapes up the asphalt, chews it up, and then spits it out sizzling on the pavement to then smooth it: 62 62 in less than an hour leaving me astonished by the speed of his feet, the power of his shots, the ease of execution. It was like watching a fir tree facing an avalanche. After two years of lockdown, I wanted to see Jannik again, so I took the car to Pala Alpitur, Davis Cup, and enjoyed a monstrous performance that humiliated poor Isner: I walked out convinced that he is a champion I will be able to enjoy live for more than a decade. The following day, I'm on my way back, relaxed, while listening to His California Album at full volume; I'm thinking about the match and just when I am a handful of kilometers from the highway entrance, I glimpse a billboard advertising a photography exhibition. I go.

The best things are those that aren't planned. Incredibly, I missed the McCurry exhibition in Trento titled Terre Alte; you know how it is... It's right there, close to home, and so you say: I'll go tomorrow. Tomorrow, the day after, next week, weeks become months, summer ends, and the last weekend you have a real unexpected event. A little Lieutenant Drogo from Il deserto dei Tartari. Serves me right, idiot! I arrive at the splendid Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi and enter the ancient kitchens to enjoy Animals.

The title is misleading in the sense that almost all the shots center around the relationship between humans and animals. Perhaps Animals is a way to remind us that we, too, though so technological, are animals. More evolved, but still animals. We often forget that we should have the responsibility to safeguard our planet, especially at this moment in history when the climate emergency, water exploitation, soil use, and resource use in general make the balance between inhabitants of the planet increasingly delicate. These shots burn, they capture you with their indisputable beauty, a dazzling chromatic charge, and expressions of the protagonists so full of sentiment. I become a piece of iron; the artwork a magnet, and I approach: it happens ten, twenty, perhaps thirty times. No, it cannot be a coincidence and no, it is not just the objectively atrocious beauty of what I'm seeing. I almost want to enter to smell the scents. My partner pulls my hand away repeatedly while I stand there, half-dazed. If I close my eyes, the panels capturing various facets of our coexistence with animals are before me. There are moving photographs expressing deep and sincere affection, but I would be lying if I said they are the majority. Most are shots of total exploitation; in some cases for mere profit, boredom, simple ostentation. In others as a strenuous form of survival struggle. A relationship always and inevitably unequal, even indirectly, as the tarred photos of the war in Kuwait testify.

Sixty shots that, if you are not completely dead, will at least make you think. I recommend it.