Humans possess an extraordinary range: the capacity for cruelty, yes, but also compassion, courage and deep devotion. For over four decades, Steve McCurry has captured the full spectrum of this experience through his lens. One of the most celebrated photojournalists of our time, McCurry’s images have borne witness to the best and worst of what we are.

In an age of deepfakes, disinformation and digital excess, McCurry stands apart as one who has seen the truth with his own eyes. His work has taken him across continents and through conflict zones, capturing moments of quiet dignity and seismic suffering. Now in his seventies, McCurry remains as driven as ever by the instinct that first drew him to photography: “From an early age I wanted to travel, and it seemed to me that photography would allow me to do so freely.”

Born in Philadelphia, McCurry studied cinematography and filmmaking at Penn State in the early 1970s. It was a class in still photography that changed everything. “I found photography simpler and more immediate, more spontaneous,” he says. “I always loved art, I always loved creating things, and I loved films from an early age, but I decided that I would be better suited to photography.”

Iconic pictures from Steve McCurry. From the left: Sharbat Gula, Afghan Girl, Peshawar, Pakistan. 1984. Father and daughter at home, Nuristan, Afghanistan, 1992. Man covered in powder, Rajasthan, India, 2009.

That wanderlust soon became visceral. His early journey into war-torn Afghanistan was almost accidental. “It was hot in Delhi,” he says with a shrug. “I had nothing else to do, so I thought I’d go to the mountains of Pakistan. There I met some Afghan refugees who told me about the war and took me in.”

Wearing Afghan garb and carrying a hidden camera, McCurry entered the country just as the Soviet invasion turned Afghanistan into a Cold War battleground. With courage and compassion, he documented the chaos, smuggling rolls of film out by sewing them into his clothing. What he brought back earned him the Robert Capa Gold Medal and changed the world’s view of the conflict.

Among those images was one that became iconic: Afghan Girl, the 1984 portrait of Sharbat Gula, a refugee whose sea-green eyes stared into the lens and into global consciousness. Vulnerable yet defiant, her gaze has haunted generations. It encapsulates McCurry’s genius: the ability to connect, to wait, to see. “It’s about understanding people, making them feel comfortable and relaxed, not posed,” he says. “A lot of it came from trial and error, thousands of portraits.”

India, where he lived for several years, became what some call his muse. McCurry resists the romanticism. “It was just the first place I went with a camera when I decided that was what I wanted to do with my life.” But he returned again and again, drawn by the colour, the contrasts and the co-existence of joy and hardship.

That same balance between beauty and suffering defines his work in conflict zones: Cambodia, Lebanon, the Gulf War and beyond. And yet McCurry resists being labelled a war photographer. “I’ve worked in areas of conflict, yes, but mostly I photographed refugees and displaced people. I wanted to understand how people lived, what they endured.”

He has risked his life more than once, almost drowning during a festival in Mumbai, attacked by drunks, or dodging bombs in Afghanistan. “Sometimes you’re just scared to death,” he admits. “You can’t really understand it until you’re there.”

But it is not conflict that defines his vision. It is humanity. And it is a belief, often quietly expressed, that we can do better. “I wonder about the direction of humanity. On the one hand, we’ve made progress. But then there are people who’d cut down the last tree to make a profit. Some people care. Others simply don’t.”

His series Devotion captures people who commit to something greater than themselves, whether religion, family or justice. “It’s about looking beyond yourself,” he says. That ethos finds a mirror in his Children series: young lives playing amid tank turrets, skipping over rubble. “Children don’t understand the divisions adults create,” McCurry reflects. “If we accepted each other more like children do, the world would be a better place.”

And what of hope? After witnessing decades of war and displacement, does he still believe?

“I think we have to,” McCurry says softly. “The alternative is disengagement and hopelessness. There are still good people trying to do good things. We have to keep going. Every small act matters. Every brick in the wall matters.”

In a time when attention is fleeting and outrage commodified, McCurry’s work remains a profound reminder: to pay attention. To care. To see. His images do not ask us to look at suffering, they invite us to see ourselves.

More than any living photographer, Steve McCurry shows us what it is to be human.

Authors: Andrew Hildreth and Julia Pasarón

This is a reduced version of the full interview with Steve McCurry in the winter issue of I-M Inquisitive Minds, available to purchase at a promotional price at our online store.

Lead image: Steve McCurry, Lebanese Civil War, 1982.

Other I-M Inquisitive Minds interviews with world-renown photographers include the late Sebastião Salgado, Joel Meyerowitz and Stephen Wilkes.