Perhaps no other photographer's work has seeped into the collective unconscious as have the images by Steve McCurry. By no means a household name, still, every casual reader of the National Geographic Magazine has been drawn into its pages by the brilliant work of this man's lens.
Phaidon Press has produced a superb volume of his work, STEVE McCURRY UNTOLD: The Stories Behind The Photographs that takes us into his past so we may explore the experience which it took to create these master images.
Years ago I read that Native Americans believed that a photograph stole the soul of a person. But McCurry's camera has allowed us to see into the corners of the world with names that were as foreign as they were distant. He allowed us to see the lives of people we would never meet, but who's existence have touched us and become a part of our own.
Had he not ventured off to some of the most remote regions of the world -- Tibet, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India -- the light from these lives would have come and gone with little impact on us all and our world would be a little darker because of such unshared humanity.
All photographs copyright Steve McCurry. The book, copyright 2013 Phaidon Press Limited
ISBN: 9780714864624