Quotes by
Steve McCurry

Most of my photos are grounded in people, I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person’s face.

What is important to my work is the individual picture. I photograph stories on assignment, and of course they have to be put together coherently. But what matters most is that each picture stands on its own, with its own place and feeling.

My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.

A picture can express a universal humanism, or simply reveal a delicate and poignant truth by exposing a slice of life that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

There are certain, inescapable images, forever part of our collective consciousness, that influence who we are, whether we are cognizant of it or not.

Just because people use Instagram and take cellphone pictures, it doesn’t mean the pictures are meaningful, anymore than a text someone sends a friend is great literature. Is it something that’s going to remain? Is it going to inspire us?

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.

I think it’s better for people just to interpret, to make up their own story, to imagine their own meaning of whatever picture. Sometimes there is an ambiguity to the picture. Sometimes there is no meaning at all! But you make up a meaning, your own interpretation, your own story, your own fantasy — which is maybe better than the actual reality. Sometimes there’s a moment you think you can see in a picture which maybe is not really there. But if you think it’s that way, then that’s okay.

If you want to be a photographer, you have to photograph. If you look at the photographers’ work you admire, you will find that they have found a particular place or subject, and then have dug deep into it, and carved out something that is special. That takes a lot of dedication, passion, and work.

For those who were desperate, my camera became an object of hope (...)Throughout my year-long coverage of the monsoon world, my strongest conviction was that I was involved in the fundamentals of life.

Most of my images are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person’s face.

The photograph is an undeniably powerful medium. Free from the constraints of language, and harnessing the unique qualities of a single moment frozen in time.

In our contemporary society, one so over-inundated with imagery, it is easy to overlook the power of a single frame to change the way we look at the world, or rally disparate hearts to a single cause. Yet, ours is a society shaped by this very phenomenon.

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.

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

I strive for individual pictures that will burn in people’s memories.

My photos are just a whimsical, poetic look at this commonality of humanity.