Steve McCurry: “I’ve photographed everyone except politicians – they’re not interesting.”

Porto Cervo. Steve McCurry arrived in Sardinia with a camera, just as he has done for more than half a century (“I’m 76 years old; I’ve been taking photographs since I was at university”, he recalls) wherever he has found something worth looking at, but on that island, photography has also become the measure of a career, because the American photographer has received the Costa Smeralda Longevity Award 2026, as part of the fifth edition of the Longevity Fest – an award presented annually to an international figure capable of leaving a lasting legacy through their personal and professional journey. The event – conceived and directed by Pietro Mereu for the Longevity Weeks organised by the Costa Smeralda Consortium in partnership with Smeralda Holding – is an award which, in his case, seems to have been almost tailor-made around the word ‘time’. “Time is what passes over faces, what transforms places, what alters the meaning of images and, at the same time, what a photograph mysteriously manages to snatch away from its own passage,” McCurry explains to Il Foglio, giving us a preview of four previously unpublished images taken at symbolic locations on the Costa Smeralda: the lighthouse and the promontory of Capo Ferro, the Church of Stella Maris and the Arch of Cala Romantica. "These are images that belong to the present, yet they fit naturally into my personal archive, built up over decades of photographing the relationship between human beings, places, cultures and time." His career began long before those images became part of our collective memory. The photographs taken in Afghanistan, for example, in the 1980s, were pivotal, particularly one: that of Sharbat Gula, the fair-eyed girl who would later become one of the most recognisable faces in contemporary photography. “It took me just a few seconds to photograph her,” he recalls, “because she looked at my lens with curiosity and wariness. It was the first time she’d ever seen a camera; she was so frightened that she ran away straight away. It is undoubtedly the most important photograph of my life.”

The photograph was published on the cover of National Geographic and became an image recognised throughout the world. “I realised quite early on that that image would become important, but that photograph was never just a photograph to me. Many people, after seeing it, wanted to go and work in the refugee camps, and the story took some incredible turns. In 2002, I managed to track her down with the help of National Geographic. When the Taliban came to power, that girl – now a woman – was terrified and wanted to leave the country. She asked us for help to emigrate. The Italian government helped her a great deal and brought her to Italy along with her family, and my sister and I decided to give her a lot of support by buying her a house and helping her for years.” (Today – as the Afghan embassy in Italy told Il Foglio – Sharbat Gula lives in Germany, but they were unable to provide any further details.) The fact is that that photograph (like all photographs) captures a moment, but it can also take it away from the photographer and entrust it to the memory of the viewer. “Photographs can take on a life of their own. Once people see them, they enter their memory and shape the way they interpret the world,” adds McCurry. “In my case, this happened with the Afghan girl, but also with seemingly simpler photographs such as the one of the tailor crossing a river with a sewing machine in his hand. Even today, people ask me why that man in my photograph is smiling, and I always reply that he did so because the people around him told him I was a photographer, so he smiled at me.” "That photograph too," he adds, "took on a new lease of life, as the company that manufactured the sewing machine contacted the man and gave him one as a gift." McCurry discusses his work without building a complicated theory around it. "I like different cultures and people," he is keen to point out.

“I’m interested in human behaviour, I love animals and I have a great curiosity about the world, about who we are and about different cultures.” It is this curiosity that draws him towards the serendipity of everyday life, which often clashes with a reality that is difficult to accept, “because photography also means recording what is in danger of disappearing. The world is changing, and some cultures have disappeared or are disappearing.” “Unfortunately, there are still some politicians who add nothing to our daily lives, but I, in my own small way, have chosen never to photograph them – Trump included, of course. What reason would I have? It would add nothing to my journey; I don’t find it interesting.” His subject, therefore, is not power but the life he encounters: the face of a person met on the street, a gesture, an animal, a landscape and a culture – something that happens without having been staged for the camera. "You have to be there. You have to observe. You have to be curious," he explains. For almost half a century, McCurry has travelled through Pakistan, China, India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Australia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Yemen and Kuwait, but the focus of his photographs has almost always remained the same: people, alongside nature and the places in which they live. Even when faced with the most dramatic events, he seems to seek out what remains. On 11 September 2001, he was in New York, having returned from China the previous evening. “I lived not far from the Twin Towers; I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

The photographs he recalls today are those taken on 12 September, the day after. Not the explosion, then, but what remains: a transformed city and the physical trace of an event that has just gone down in history. It is that same perspective that led him to photograph the duck submerged in oil during the Gulf War in the 1990s (used for a historic cover – the very first – of Benetton’s *Colours* magazine) in a landscape scarred by war and devastation. “There was too much oil, but there was no food. The colour black thus became the essence of that story.” Almost half a century on from the start of his journey, McCurry says he hasn’t changed much. “I’m still curious. I like walking, meeting people, getting to know very different people; I simply try to grow in this work. What has changed is the world in front of the lens. That is precisely why photography can become a form of mindfulness in the face of haste, capturing something before it changes yet again.” This holds true even in Sardinia, where he says he is drawn today to the people, the food, the climate and the landscape. “People are very different, but they also have a lot in common and continue to surprise me. Perhaps this is the secret to a lasting perspective: never ceasing to be amazed.” For him, longevity also stems from everyday life. "Moving about a lot, eating well, sleeping – as for the other thing, I can’t say; I have a nine-year-old daughter." And he laughs. "There isn’t a single photograph capable of summing it all up," he says before saying goodbye. "The photos that speak of life and emotions are the ones I like best; I couldn’t choose just one."This, in fact, is his idea of photography: a sequence of moments that time cannot entirely take away, to which are added those dedicated to Sardinia. McCurry bids us farewell and sets off walking, continuing to do so even at night, after dinner, in the gardens of Cala di Volpe. And he continues to look, and continues to take photographs.