Steve's body of work spans conflicts, vanishing cultures, ancient traditions and contemporary culture alike - yet always retains the human element.
Author:Steve McCurry
Steve McCurry has been one of the most iconic voices in contemporary photography for more than thirty years, with scores of magazine and book covers, over a dozen books, and countless exhibitions around the world to his name.
To read more about Steve go to www.stevemccurry.com/bio
A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit, and a violin;
what else does a man need to be happy?
– Albert Einstein
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to having it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbors. Such is my idea of happiness. – Leo Tolstoy
It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving,
but like morning light it scattered the night and
made the day worth living. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Happiness is not something ready-made.
It comes from your own actions
– Dalai Lama
Happiness is a warm puppy. – Charles Schultz
The art of creating intimacy cannot be bought by anything but time, interest and engagement in the people around you. The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well
– Meik Wiking
True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done,
the zest of creating things new.
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Life is not a problem to be solved. Just remember to have something that keeps you busy doing what you love while being surrounded by the people who love you. Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life, Hector Garcia Puigcerver
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do…
…so throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain
A traveler without observation is a bird without wings. – Moslih Eddin Saadi
The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began, Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. – Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go.
I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. – Robert Louis Stevenson
Earth’s crammed with heaven. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. – St. Augustine
Go far. Stay long. See deep.
And may the sun rise twice before you sleep.
– Unknown
Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God. – Kurt Vonnegut
Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined,
self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is,
not the way you imagine it. – Mark Jenkins
Please visit Steve’s website to place an order for a poster!
To place an order click on ‘Continental U.S.’ or ‘International’, whichever applies to your shipment destination.
‘This is Burma’, wrote Rudyard Kipling. ‘It will be quite unlike any land you know about.’
Each day these nuns walked a circuit around the city. McCurry asked if he could walk with them to make photographs. With their consent, he accompanied them for several days, searching for the best light and location. Even without their presence, this residential area could make a colourful image. With their presence, McCurry deliberately sought a rainy day in order to have some control over the level of color in the image. The line of their parasols echoes the yellow horizontal and creates the commentary of an adjacent hue upon the red brick. – Anthony Bannon
The fishermen of the Inle Lake are famous for the way they paddle their boats using their legs. The conical nets are dropped into the shallow waters to catch the fish.
In the unique watery world of Inle Lake, Intha fisherman row canoes with one leg, gardens float, and wooden homes perch above the water on rickety stilts. – Catherine Bodry
The Golden Rock is an important Buddhist site. McCurry spent days there determining the best vantage point and time. The picture was taken about 10 minutes after sunset. “The lights which illuminate the rock at night have just been turned on and provide an accent light and shadow on the right.” from ‘Steve McCurry’
– Anthony Bannon
There is a gentleness and an elegance to the Burmese people, and the role that Buddhism plays
in everyday life is very evident.
– Steve McCurry
The stairway is narrow and steep as it climbs a 300-foot lava plug crowned by Buddhist temples. The plug rises from the slope of Mount Popa an extinct volcano, where thousands of pilgrims flock each May to a festival honoring a multitude of terrestrial spirits called nats. Burma’s Buddhists have a healthy respect for the nats, who bestow favors on those who honor them and inflict punishment on non-believers.
Two novice monks head back to their monastery in the late afternoon after doing some errands in the town of Bayon. Bagan, Myanmar, 2010.
I photographed this young child with thanaka on his face in Bagan. Thanaka is a paste made from tree bark, and while often used as decoration, it also provides protection from sunburn. It is applied in patterns and designs. – Steve McCurry
Earthquakes caused these deep cracks to appear in the incredible Mingun Pagoda. Built to house a relic of the Buddha, the brick structure was originally intended to be over 150 meters tall. However, the technology was not capable of enabling its full construction and so it reaches 30 meters. Framed by the massive entrance, three monks are seen climbing the crumbling steps.
An Intha fisherman paddles his boat on Inle Lake in Burma/Myanmar. The Intha fishermen of Inle Lake, a highland freshwater lake, are famous for the way they paddle their boats using their legs. Some Intha people live at the edge of the lake, but others grow vegetables in floating gardens and live
in houses on stilts.
Join Steve McCurry on a nine-day photography workshop and take your photography skills to the next level. Steve will be leading a workshop in Burma from February 19th to 27th, 2021.
Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness. – Leo Tolstoy
And Joy is Everywhere; It is in the Earth’s green covering of grass; In the blue serenity of the Sky; In the reckless exuberance of Spring; In the severe abstinence of gray Winter; In the Living flesh that animates our bodily frame; In the perfect poise of the Human figure, noble and upright; In Living; In the exercise of all our powers; In the acquisition of Knowledge; in fighting evils… Joy is there Everywhere. – Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941
A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked. – Anais Nin
There is no greater joy nor greater reward than to make a fundamental difference in someone’s life.
– Sr. Mary Rose McGeady
Shared joy is a double joy -Swedish Proverb
To get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with. – Mark Twain
Find ecstasy in life;
the mere sense of living is joy enough.
– Emily Dickinson
Joy is not in things; it is in us. – Richard Wagner
Joy is the serenity of heaven. – John Donne
We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
but we can choose to live in joy. – Joseph Campbell
My mind to me a kingdom is, such present joys therein I find, That it excels all other bliss – Sir Edward Dyer 1543 – 1607
When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy. – Rumi, 1207-1273
In time of care and sorrow, keep a
fountain of joy alive in you. – Dietrich Bonhoffer
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Please visit Steve’s website to place an order for a poster!
To place an order click on ‘Continental U.S.’ or ‘International’, whichever applies to your shipment destination.
It is a great privilege to receive works by other artists who have been inspired by Steve McCurry’s photography.
It is a wonderful affirmation of the strength and dignity of the faces of these people and places around the world. We want to thank everyone who sent us their works.
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
– Wendell Berry from New Collected Poems (Counterpoint, 2012)
We are such stuff as dreams are made on,
and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
– William Shakespeare
We sleep as much as a third of our lives, so it is clear that we are actually doing some important “work” during that time. From consolidating memory and learning, to repairing our bodies, sleep isn’t so much a luxury as a necessity.
“Now,
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of
sleep has worked on it.
– John Steinbeck
Dreams are more real than reality itself;
they’re closer to the self.
– Gao Xingjian
Your future depends on your dreams,
so go to sleep.
– Mesut Barazany
A good laugh and a long sleep are the
best cures in the doctor’s book.
– Irish proverb
Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work
and helps make something of the world.
– Heraclitus
Lourdes, France
Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even.
– Miguel de Cervantes
Motherhood: All love begins and ends there. – Robert Browning
It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful? – Mahatma Gandhi
All that I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. – Abraham Lincoln
Mother is the name for God in the lips
and hearts of little children. – William Makepeace Thackeray
Mother: the most beautiful word
on the lips of mankind.
—Kahlil Gibran
Artists have been depicting the special bond between mothers and their children for hundreds of years.
Relationships can be difficult to describe, and sometimes an image tells the story better than words. One of the most powerful and unforgettable photos depicting a mother and her children in the history of photography is Dorothea Lange’s photograph of a destitute mother and her children taken in 1936.
Dorothea Lange said in an interview about the picture, “She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me.”
“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law…
– Agatha Christie