The point of photography

think this photograph of an Afghan girl taken by Steven McCurry in 1994 in a makeshift girls school in a refugee camp in Pakistan tells the viewer so much more than just being a nice portrait of a girl. The story is all in the eyes. I think generally portraits should focus on the eyes.

My reply;

This image has such a thought provoking presence. The almost ghostly nature to such a beautiful face resonates an almost scared appearance, looking at the image you are automatically drawn to her eyes, I feel this could be the photographers way of showing into the woman soul, as we all know the " eyes are the windows to the soul" analogy. By drawing the views attention to the centre of the image using her eyes", we then take a panned out view of the whole image, noticing things like the use of two very diverse colour pallets, could this be symbolising the inner turmoil of the subject ?. The image almost makes me question the authenticity of its nature, as we all know this was a serendipitous framing of a situation, so does the use of a very strict colour palette with little tonal variations, around the colour of her eyes make anyone else question the validity of the photographers story ?.