Steve McCurry and the little girl in the Piazza Navona photo together (30 years later)

The hand shyly hides the smiling mouth, the blue coat, the pleated skirt that comes out from underneath, the red socks and a biscuit in the right hand. So, thirty years ago, Steve McCurry he portrayed Mara Mercetelli in Piazza Navona in Rome. Today the photographer sat a second time on that bench with Mara, now an adult. They met in Rome, in the same place where the photo was first taken.

“I photographed Mara Marcelli in Piazza Navona in 1990, and I met her again at the same bench a few weeks ago. @killerqueen719 #Rome, 2023», Steve McCurry wrote on Instagram, posting the portrait taken in 1990 and the new photo taken together these days. “Destiny gives wonderful gifts”, commented the girl under the photographer’s post. «It was an indescribable emotion, a dream that will remain forever imprinted in my heart and mind. Thanks for this wonderful gift Steve. Hope I can meet you again soon. And I also hope it was a gift for you too».

A gift that McCurry has recently experienced also together with Sharbat Gula (Afghan Girl)the cold-eyed Afghan girl, who was 12 at the time, who became an icon, star of the photographer’s best-known shot published on the cover of the National Geographic in the eighties. It took McCurry more than ten years to find her and when he succeeded, after returning to Pakistan in 2002, in 2021 while the Taliban returned to take power in Afghanistan, he helped her start a new life here in Italy. “There was no doubt in my mind that this was the girl I’d filmed years ago. Her eyes were the same as hers, she had the same distinctive scar on her nose. All of her facial features matched. I knew right away it was her,” McCurry said after finding her.