Steve McCurry

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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.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Might
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If you wait, people will forget your camera, and the soul will drift up into view.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Views
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If you want to be a photographer, first leave home
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Funny
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The definition of a great picture is one that stays with you, one that you can't forget. It doesn't have to be technically good at all.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Definitions
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Most of my photos are grounded in people, I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a persons face.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Photography
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My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Inspirational
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Some of the great pictures happen along the journey and not necessarily at your destination.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Journey
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I strive for individual pictures that will burn in people's memories.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Memories
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I think life is too short not to be doing something which you really believe in.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Life Is Too Short
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It’s important for you to spend your time photographing things that matter to you. You need to understand the things that have meaning to you, and not what others think is important for you.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Thinking
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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.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: People
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What matters most is that each picture stands on its own with its own place and feeling.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: What Matters
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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.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Powerful
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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.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Prayer
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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.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Wall
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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.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Heart
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Unconsciously, I think I watch for a look, an expression, features or nostalgia that can summarize or more accurately reveal life.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Thinking
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I think life is too short not to be doing something which you really believe in. Whether you're photographing for yourself, for your job, whether you photograph on the weekends or everyday or once in a while, the main point is having fun and to be exercising your curiosity and to be really in love with what you are doing.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Photography
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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.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: What Matters
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If you want to be a photographer, you have to photograph.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Want
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To become a photographer leave your house first.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: House
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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.
- Steve McCurry
Collection: Years