The inspiring work and words of photographer Steve McCurry

Award-winning photographer Steve McCurry requires little introduction. In a career stretching over three decades, the Pennsylvania native has led a peripatetic life, exploring continents and cultures, producing vast bodies of work that have been exhibited, documented, published, and celebrated internationally. In 2004, McCurry set up ImagineAsia, a non-profit organisation that works to uplift the lives of children in Afghanistan.

Here we present a series of iconic images by McCurry, captured on his many trips across Asia.

Burma
“A still photograph is something which you can always go back to. You can put it on your wall and look at it again and again. Because it is that frozen moment. I think it tends to burn into your psyche. It becomes ingrained in your mind. A powerful picture becomes iconic of a place or a time or a situation.”

Japan
“Unconsciously, I think I watch for a look, an expression, features or nostalgia that can summarise or more accurately reveal life.”

Kashmir
“We photographers say that we take a picture, and in a certain sense, that is true. We take something from people’s lives, but in doing so we tell their story.”

India
“In India in particular, where millions have no home but the streets, virtually every life event is carried out in public: prayer, eating, sleeping, nursing, crude dentistry, even bodily functions. In the secular West, where nothing is sacred, everything seems hidden; yet in Asia, where nothing is hidden, everything is sacred.”

Sri Lanka
“If you wait, people will forget your camera, and the soul will drift up into view.”