Digital or film is irrelevant when discussing McCurry's trademark image, Afghan Girl. He had a camera. He was there are the right time and the right moment, AND he had refined sense of empathy and association with the subject that allowed him, for a few brief sections to capture that cold, haunting stare, he then moved on. Twenty hears later he re-photographed Sharba Gullut, Afghan Girl, with the same empathy and associative qualities that made his first image. The only big difference was that the resulting image was nowhere near as hauntingly beautiful as the first, but we can understand that: age and the incessant weariness of war would take its toll on the hardest of hardened Pashtun, the feared ethnics to which Gullut belonged. I have viewed several later works of McCurry and don't think those works are anywhere near as moving as the one that put his name up in lights, even though decades later very few people can associate the image with the photographer by name. Luck, timing and preparedness, together with people skills would have delivered millions of similar images in the decades since, whether on film or digital. Good on McCurry for using what is best for his professional needs irrespective of what others think. That's what we all do.
