Conversation with ... Steve McCurry ... on Afghanistan.

• Position: Interview

STEVE MCCURRY, whose poignant images capture the essence of human struggle and joy, is recognized as one of today's finest photographers. For more than 25 years, his images of the young and old alike have told the story of joy and suffering in the world. His work serves as icons that chronicle the changing face of Asia, especially the conflicted tapestry of Afghanistan. It was a journey that started in 1979 in India, where he learned to watch and wait. "If you wait, people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view", he says.

Through ImagineAsia, a foundation he helped form and whose long-term goal is to provide stipends for teachers and develop an infrastructure for training programmes within schools, McCurry has assisted in providing thousands of books and supplies to schools in the Bamiyan region of Afghanistan. His photography has focused the world's attention on the critical need to educate the Afghan children. He is perhaps best known for his haunting photograph of the green-eyed Afghan girl, featured on the cover of National Geographic in June 1985.

McCurry's photos will be part of an exhibit at the United Nations in the fall of 2006. Co-sponsored by Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU), the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the United Nations, the United Nations Population Fund and the Department of Public Information, the exhibit will include quotes from a new book, Coming of Age in a Globalized World: The Next Generation, by FDU President J. Michael Adams and Director of Communications Angelo Carfagna. It is a collaboration that promises to be an enlightening journey and will help focus international attention on the plight of the Afghan children.

Steve McCurry spoke about his work in Asia, particularly his experience in Afghanistan, with colleague Art Petrosemolo of FDU, who accompanied him to Kabul and Bamiyan in March 2006 (see photo on page 43).

What brought you to Afghanistan the first time?

After working at a newspaper in Philadelphia [United States], I left to do magazine freelance assignments in India in 1978. I spent one and a half years travelling throughout India and Nepal, photographing for a variety of small magazines. In the spring of 1979, when the temperature was over 40° Celsius, I travelled up into the mountains of northwest Pakistan to explore that part of the subcontinent that I had not visited before. While staying in a small hotel in the village of Chitral, I met some Afghan refugees from...