Steve McCurry

Photographer, Steve McCurry might be most famous for his mysterious and arrestingly beautiful photograph, "The Afghan Girl", but his entire collection of work is so much profound.

In this interview McCurry reflects on his photography and speaks with FotoTV about his unique experiences and stories behind his iconic work. McCurry’s first trip abroad as a photographer was to India. Shortly after he took a trip to Afghanistan during the early days of insurgency and revolution, which was the turning point of his career. Always fascinated with meeting new people and discovering new countries and cultures, McCurry began to pitch his own ideas for stories to magazine editors. Those ideas were always simple, to take meaningful photos of situations and things that were moving and inspiring, merely his response to the world surrounding him. Human behavior seems to be the element always present in McCurry’s images, the human face and its expressions and how people differ from culture to culture.

Currently working on a long-term project on Buddhism, he travels back to India at least once a year to visit the country and people he has come to love and understand, each time discovering something unknown and cherishing every moment of new experience. Throughout his career he has collected a vast amount of vivid portraits and photographs reflecting the daily lives of people and their cultures around the world and assembled them in a book project entitled "Portraits". With so much success and international accolades he remains humble and grateful to be able to share his work with people, and to be aware of what it means to live on this planet.