By Vurdlak on November 17, 2009, with 392 Comments
"Afghan Girl" by Steve McCurry
Probably all of you saw this picture at some point of your life. Titled the “Afghan Girl”, this photo was named the most recognized photograph in the history of National Geographic. Although girl’s name was not known, her picture appeared on the June 1985 cover of the magazine. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. Gula was known throughout the world simply as the Afghan Girl until she was formally identified in early 2002.
Over time, many variations of Steve McCurry’s original photo appeared. At some point even in optical illusion form, as we see below. All I could find about this illusion, is that people can’t seem to look at it for too long. Apparently you get a headache, or become nervous at best. Maybe this isn’t the true nature of this illusion, but it just didn’t make me hallucinate like some other animations did. Wait few seconds for the animation to load (it’s 1MB big), and share your experience afterward.
(154 votes)
Yeah, her right eye (on the left of the picture) is radiating outwardly, so as to appear as slowly getting larger, and the other is irradiating inward, so as to appear as slowly getting smaller. I’m fairly sure the desired effect of this illusion was to make it seem like her head is slowly turning to our right, but it doesn’t work very well
it reminded me of the snake in the movie Jungle Book
That was awesome, reminds of the times i worked in pakistan. I’ve worked in many places in the world (Africa, Nepal, india, Thailand, El salvador) but i have to say, without a doubt, that I find the peoples of Pakistan and Afghanistan to be the most beautiful and unique peoples in the world!
It was hard for me to focus my eyes on the image. The animation kept going on blurry on me.
If you look on the forehead (bout 1cm above her eye lvl) you can see a third source of waves, and since its not as prominent as the two sources located on the eyes you may not notice it, and those waves might confuse you
I looked at it for a couple min then let my eyes blur. Seems there’s a 3rd circle at work there expanding outwards. It’s close to the middle of her forehead, kind of like a 3rd eye.
LOLZ! Stare in the eyes and the thing beocmes so dense it nervouses otherwise its just lolz for the hypnotad.
gaaahhh it gave me a fucking headache >0<
I don’t get it. What’s the illusion here? It’s just a photo with some lame animation on top of it…that’s not an illusion…
Wow, that was freaky.
I stared at her lips, and her eyes seemed to wink or disappear.
At one point I got her to look like a red skeleton.
I second the “ear ache” comment, however mine was the left ear. Not to mention, got pretty nervous, as well. Won’t be looking at that again!
ok -_-” this is actually moving LOL
its not a jpeg format its an animated picture
of course it makes u dizzy LOL
yeah!… stare at the girl’s EYES!!…. something will MOVE… this is neat!… LOL hehehe ^_^ im looking forward for more optical photos… ^_^
nice .. !! its moving and seems like she is staring at me too … !!
it scares me. she scares me. like she’s still out there, standing there, and she has a secret she’s trying to you with her eyes. i looked at her nose, and it looked like she became a old woman. whenever i look at her eyes i feel like at any second she’s gonna scream at me and her face will turn into a hideous banshee, i guess it’s the freakish beauty. she’s amazing and complex, and i love this one.
purely amazing. she is amazing.
IT WON’T STOP SPINNING!
its scary
fake, it isn’t a illusion, is a gif
What a lot of nonsense. How can it be an optical illusion if it really is moving? That’s not an illusion it’s just an…optical!
If you look at it for like a while, just look in one spot, the picture starts to “morph” you probably get the headache because there is a third pulsating circle on the forehead, and get nervous because one circle on the eye pulses out and the other pulses in
This made me go dizzy and feel sick, it is amazing though
It’s a .gif-file, it’s animated.. fake
…if you look at the bottom right corner, it looks like she’s getting closer O.o
Ma sha Allah(see the power of God creation)
this eys tells the history of a thousends girls
whom wonders under the Tents, Travellers around all Afghanistan, in these 30 years war they , havent seen much except Tint and Travelling, but they love freedem.
you can see not only their eyes differ but, all the apperances are even more nutral and beautiful live which we stragule to manage with our puluted lives in the City.
Soooo#
I would call it Nuturally Beautiful
that is an animated picture that is not optical illusion
no noervous
no headache
no nothing
3 complete minutos watching…and i got nothing
I put my nuts up against the screen but it didn’t feel any different?
ears start aching after sometime but its nice
I dont like it, it doesn’t seme to do anything the only thing i did notice is your eyes can’t fcus properly as the circles keep changing from 1, 2 and 3 different circles sometime all at the same time and other times not.
It’s been a curious experience.
I think that authors of this animation have chosen this picture because girl’s look is really deep and intense but in my opinion waves effect override it. It doesn’t depend on the picture, try to put a different one, maybe one of yours, and get the same visual effect, waves departing from one eye and waves arriving to the other one, and you’ll feel the same, whatever it is.
Yeah, indeed really funny.
Oh God!, my head hurts!!
i cant stare at it for more than 5 secs or i get dizzy and my head starts hurting!!
how!? i stared at it for 2 min. and still it did not bug me.
look at it with only 1 eye open. it makes it a whole lot easier!
while your heart pumps (pulse) its so to see this stop your breath as much as you can
and view this
In what way is this an optical illusion? It’s not at all.
Yea this is trippy. Ive seen this photogaphe before, (and the episode on Nat. Geo when they finally found out who she is and her looks have been devastated and extremely aged by the trauma and tragedies in her life) it’s sad that she had to live in that environment cause she was just so stunningly gorgeous but then again alot of people were dealing with the devastation in her area at that time. God bless her still, and nice illusion.
Well I was looking at it for about 5 minutes and all I can tell I noticed and again I am not sure about it is that she was moving her head left and right and she was getting older and younger again. Again I am not sure about these but… Hey, I tried!
nothing happened to me..
i looked at this photo almost around several minutes but nothing happened…. :S
Stared at it for a while, it was interesting. Read some comments, went back and looked directly between the eyes. Focusing on that spot for a period of no more than ten seconds, the lines become dominate and then she seems to move, closer.
Try scrolling down and reading some comments to refocus your eyes if it doesn’t seem to work the first time.
Reply on results :D
Same as Ben, I stared at both the left and the right eye individually, for no more than, what, 3 seconds? And I noticed she seemed to move towards me when I looked at the right, and pulled back in the left. :3 Her eyes feel real deep.
it’s emily perkins not Afghan Girl
holy crap that is freaky
i saw nothing special tho…
hahahaaha
wowwww
aaaaa she is hypnotizing meh
yes i see her aging as well i agree with nek
Sorry to spoil things but this isn’t an optical illusion. I’ve seen concentric ring optical illusions which were static but gave a surprising illusion of motion. That’s not what is happening here however.
This is simply two overlapping animated patterns which deliberately confuse the viewer with two different directions of motion.
This effect will induce neausea within a short time for most people, similar to motion sickness. The background image could really be anything but because it’s a face the effect is emphasised even more, as our eyes can’t help but be drawn to the subjects eyes and the centre of the rings.
nothing happened…
It scared the shit out of me!
This thing is hypnotizing people!
You are getting veeeery sleeeeeepy… stare deeeper… deeper…
Its like the snake from the jungle book. It is freaky, but like it VERY MUCH, it is fu**ng clever.
hahahaahahahahaha nothing happened…
nothing happend to me!
it’s a kool illusionary photo. however, it is true that with more sensitive minded ppl it can b hiptonizing. yes, her head does appear 2 move, u just have to look in the right spots 4 a few secongs up 2 a couple mins depending on how sensitive ur mind is 2 things like this. my psycho-therapist used to use something similar for hypnotism to help ppl remember blocked memories and fight addictions…… i like it
question tho…. has anyone ever tried it with 3d glasses???? if u have or decided to do it plz lemme kno how that goes
This is really nice and while you look for longer concentrating to her eyes it is really deep.
my sister recognises her and wants to know that was this pic shown on discovery or national geographyor on any artical??
is it just me or did the face seem to get really big or closer?
Its really scared.. She can makes me sleep .. lol.. I like it..
Wow, I felt really hypnotized by this, and would have been willing to do anything anyone told me for a bit afterwards, it was really trippy!
If someone added text to this I would probably do what it said lol
AFTER AWIEL IT LOOKED LIKE A GUY
Does anyone else see the third eye aspect of the picture??
Wow. That’s crazy! But I have to admit, her eyes honestly scare me. Intense.
it scared me and gave me a headache
I figured it out!!!
stare at the moving picture, the animated one…look at any point on her face, in fact, look anywhere in the picture, focus on that point, now think of what colors you are looking at, the entire picture is only made up of a handful of colors all moving, you can focus on just these colors moving and it is as if the actual picture of her has gone. all you see are black, red, bright green, pink.
there is NO skin color, just the four colors moving over each other….
NO MATTER WHERE YOU LOOK!!
then move your head back to see the whole picture and you see all the color in her face.
Sorry, there is also a blue, the blue is formed in the “3rd eye” circle on her forehead…. :-)
As you look onto the picture, the eye to your left {her right eye}, has circles coming out, the eye on the right {her left eye}, has circles moving in a inward movement. As things appear normally to me, when I look on to anybodies face, or picture of a face.
Oh that was a fairly nifty illusion, using only two colours to make the whole image… There’s two “sources” As previous people have mentioned one radiating outward, the other contracting inward… centered on her two eyes… But the Illusion is that all the circles from the same source are all exactly the same colour. (red for the one and bluey-green for the other)
Was it just me or was the picture blinking
OK, to clear the mystery how it works (And how do you think the guy who created that image got the idea, hm?). It’s simple psychology.
This WILL make anyone nervous and anxious who is not something like a psychopath (whose fear response is not normal). Or let me rephrase, this WILL trigger stress and it can even cause panic attacks in emotionally unstable people. The image suggests widely opened eyes with contracting pupils. It triggers an ancient fear response in your “lizard” brain (the emotional/instinctive brain part that evolved before we were mammals).
People naturally react to the contrast between the white of a wide opened eye and the strongly contracting pupils with fear, because this is a part of a fear expression. If you were a caveman and you see that expression in someone’s face, that person probably just recognized a saber-toothed cat behind your back. It’s crucial for survival to copy the fear reaction immediately and rise stress levels in order to prepare your body to flee, even if you don’t know yet what the threat is.
Just try it at home. Create a strong light condition so you pupils contract strongly, open your eyes and ries your eyebrows widely and walk slowly toward the mirror, looking yourself into your own eyes. For some people it’s already sufficient to trigger a very similar fear response.
And here is a brief description how your eyes express fear (also google for “Paul Ekman”)
When you get frightened, some muscles on your face get tense (I spare the details which ones), your eyebrows raise and your pupils dilate at first. This is to collect as much visual information as possible about the possible threat. Then your pupils strongly contract, which enables your sharp vision and gives you better chances to flee without falling over a tree root or whatever you can fall over. Your eyebrows remain widely open to still allow as much light as possible to pass the contracted pupils. This gives you maximum incoming light possible while prioritizing maximum sharpness.