Life through a special lens: The work of Steve McCurry

Sharbat Gula, an Afghan girl, at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan, 1984.

A flower seller at Dal Lake, Srinagar, Kashmir in 1996. McCurry travelled with the sellers for 2 weeks.

A young boy dashes through the narrow alleyways of Jodhpur, Rajasthan, in India, 2007.

Clad in traditional saram, a group of men fish using wooden perches at Sri Lanka’s south coast. They were said to use such poles to be able to poach in shallow waters without disturbing the fish. Weligama, Sri Lanka, 1995.

Camels search for shrubs and water in the burning oil fields of Al Ahmadi, southern Kuwait, 1991. The camels would soon be covered in oil.

Hazrat Ali Mosque, Mazar i Sharif, Afghanistan, 1992.

Men stand on top of the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan in 1984.

An exhibition in London captures the work of an American photographer who travelled the region and the world.

Afghan Girl is the image that, for many, represents the photography of Steve McCurry. Yet the image neither defines nor describes the scale and scope of his work.

A new exhibition in London captures the creative spirit of the American-born photographer, who won his first major award in 1980 while covering the war in Afghanistan for Time magazine.

It was there, four years later that he captured the striking image of a young green-eyed refugee girl in a headscarf, in a haunting portrait that – used on the cover of National Geographic – came to represent the beauty and tragedy of Afghanistan.

As the new exhibtion shows, McCurry has devoted much of his time and work to the region, in particular India, capturing the lives and sometimes unexpected beauty of ordinary people in times of war and peace.

Steve McCurry runs until March 19 at the Beetles and Huxley Gallery in Swallow Street.

All photos:© Steve McCurry. Images courtesy Beetles and Huxley.