Just Write

Bamiyan, Afghanistan

Without words, without writing and without books
there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
- Hermann Hesse

Baluchistan, Pakistan

Writing  is one of the grand, free human activities.
-  Thomas E. Cronin

Yemen

Writing is both mask and unveiling.
- E.B. White

Mali

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
- William Wordsworth

Kegalla, Sri Lanka

 Burma

Writing is thinking on paper.
- William Zinsser

 Kabul, Afghanistan

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite…
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Honduras

Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.
- Jules Renard, Journal, 10 April 1895

India

Like most—maybe all— writers, I learned to write by writing and,
by example, by reading books.
- Francine Prose

Bruce Duffy, writer and author, working on an article for Life Magazine, Afghanistan

The pen is mightier than the sword.
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Dith Pran, survivor of Cambodia’s killing fields, photojournalist, and author of
Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors

Paul Theroux, writer and novelist, Costa Rica

Words so innocent and powerless as they are,
as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil
they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Paraguay

Creative writing begins with creative thinking
- K. Earle

Colombia

Afghanistan

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.
- Vita Sackville-West

Thailand

Writing left by visitors to a pilgrimage site in Burma

Peru

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought,
this in turn makes us think more deeply about life … 
- Norbet Platt

Young Sikh boys in classroom, Afghanistan

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
- Mark Twain

Passion of Italy

Rome, Italy 

 

My exhibition in Rome at the Museum of Contemporary Art opened December 3, 2011, and will run through April 29, 2012.   
As part of the exhibition,  I was commissioned to photograph locations all over Italy. 

Here are a few of those pictures:

 

Venice, Italy

 There is no more magnificent absurdity than Venice. To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself,
but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.
- Alexander Herzen

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
- Denis Diderot

Sicily, Italy

 

Vatican City, Rome, Italy 

 

When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
― Rumi

Sicily, Italy 

Rome, Italy

Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
-  Georg Wilhelm

Sicily, Italy

Sicily, Italy

Rome, Italy

Whether you say Gioia di Vivere in Italian, or Joie de Vivre in French, or other expressions which
attempt to capture a passion for life,   you know the difficulty
of expressing the intangible in words.  I hope these pictures reflect the vibrant joy of life in Italy.

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
― Mark Twain

Rome, Italy

My mind to me a kingdom is,
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss.
-  Sir Edward Dyer

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

Rome, Italy

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
- John Keats

Venice, Italy

Nothing in the world that you ever heard of Venice, is equal to the
magnificent and stupendous reality.
- Charles Dickens

Selected Media Coverage

http://www.vogue.it/en/people-are-talking-about/art-photo-design/2011/12/steve-mccurry

http://www.video.mediaset.it/video/tg5/tg5_la_lettura/265739/steve-mccurry.html

We invite you to take a look at our new website:

http://www.stevemccurry.com

Importance of Elsewhere

Calcutta, India

In Paul Theroux’s new book, The Tao of Travel, he writes,
“As a child, yearning to leave home and go far away, the image in my mind was of flight — my little self hurrying off alone.
I wanted to find a new self in a distant place, and new things to care about.  The importance of elsewhere was something
I took on faith.  Elsewhere was the place I wanted to be.”

Afghanistan

 ”The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human; the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to
change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger,
to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown …”   – Theroux

Brazil

Niger

Mali

Mizoram, India

Shanghai, China

Havana, Cuba

“…The tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a
few weeks or months,the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly,
over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.”
- Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky 

Tibet

Tibet

Thailand

India

 

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust

India

Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan

“All good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the
midst of terror and wonder. ”
- Pico Iyer, Why We Travel

Varanasi, India

Bangladesh

Bangladesh

 

Sulu Sea, Philippines

“There is a change that takes place in a man or a woman in transit.
You can see this at its most exaggerated on a ship when whole personalities change.”
- John Steinbeck

Burma/Myanmar

 ”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

Potala Palace, Lhasa, Tibet

Paul Theroux, Papagayo, Costa Rica

 

“Travel is flight and pursuit in equal parts.”
The Great Railway Bazaar, Theroux

Agra, India

 

Gatherings, Protests, and Celebrations

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts …
- William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”

 

Young Monks at Tashi Lhunpr, Xigaze, Tibet

 

New York City, USA

 

Croatia

 

Via Condotti, Rome, Italy

 

Mumbai/Bombay, India

 

Druze elders, Lebanon

 

Debating Monks at Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India

 

One of Mumbai’s laughing clubs, India

 

Peshawar, Pakistan

 

Kashmir

 

Shia Mosque, Kabul, Afghanistan

 

Rajasthan, India

 

Monsoon Festival, Kathmandu, Nepal

 

 

Kumbh Mela Festival, India

It is wonderful, the power of a faith like that, that can make multitudes upon multitudes of the old and weak and the young and frail enter without hesitation or complaint upon such incredible journeys and endure the resultant miseries without repining.
- Mark Twain

Temporary pontoon bridges across the Ganges River help to facilitate movement of some of the thirty million Hindu devotees who will take part in the Kumbh Mela Festival,  Allahabad, India.

 

Thrissur Pooram, Kerala, India

Thrissur Pooram is the most extravagent and colorful festival in Kerala.  Attended by tens of thousands of devotees, the festivities include dozens of caparisoned elephants.  These Indian elephants are loved, revered, groomed, and given a prestigious place in the state’s culture.

Thrissur Pooram, Kerala, India

 

Ganesh Chaturthi festival, Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai, India

 

Yangon, Burma/Myanmar during the Thingyan Festival

 

Jokhang Palace,  Lhasa, Tibet

 

Niger

 

These young Wadabi men are taking part in the Garawal, an annual marriage ritual performed by the tribe. In this event, dramatic make-up is applied to the faces of the men, who dance and make exaggerated expressions in an attempt to attract new brides.