Steve And Sunhil On A Roll

STEVE MCCURRY'S PICTURES NEED LITTLE introduction: the Afghan Girl, his iconic portrait from the war in Afghanistan; and the India work including his photographs of the Rabari community and the Mumbai monsoon, which he spent months documenting. An icon of contemporary photography, McCurry has created a distinctive body of work, driven by curiosity, by really digging into a place and capturing the extraordinary in the ordinary.

In India at the invitation of Leica India, he spent time with the photography community at Leica’s Mumbai and Delhi stores celebrating a shared passion for telling human stories through photography. The exchange placed storytelling at the heart of the creative practice. For Esquire India, McCurry sat down with fellow photographer Sunhil Sippy to talk about getting under the skin of a place, keeping the wanderlust alive and what it takes to really see while shooting. Then there was the story of the Last Roll: McCurry, famously associated with Kodachrome film, was entrusted with its final roll. The experience later inspired the film Kodachrome, starring Ed Harris.

McCurry is not much of a talker when it comes to his process and work. But as Sippy noticed, put a photograph in front of him, and the reticence disappears. “A lot of people would like to just wax eloquent about themselves, or their journey, but you’re not that keen on talking about it. But the moment a picture is put in front of you, you light up, you change,” Sippy says, with a laugh.

Excerpts from the interview:

Sippy: Steve, you’ve said that, as a photographer, your bodies of work tend to take years and years to develop. Archives make for fascinating conversations, and this idea of repetition—returning to the same places again and again—to me is one of the most fascinating things about photography. You can’t really get under the skin of a place by visiting it just once. Does that idea of repetition play a role in your work?

McCurry: Oh yeah, absolutely. I was in Calcutta [Kolkata] just a few days ago. I’ve been there before, but I decided to spend every day going back to the same neighbourhood where they make those statues.: Oh yeah, absolutely. I was in Calcutta [Kolkata] just a few days ago. I’ve been there before, but I decided to spend every day going back to the same neighbourhood where they make those statues.

Sippy: Yes, Kumartuli.

McCurry: Then I expanded it several blocks. Five minutes this way, 10 minutes that way. I got to know the places that had things to offer: light and backgrounds and people and different things. And when you go there in the afternoon one way, and come back the other way, or go in at night to a different light.

The repetition thing, I think that’s something not spoken about. We just take it for granted; we don’t think it’s important to verbalise. But it’s kind of a big deal, it’s about getting under the skin.

The thing is, though, you need a certain—I don’t know what the word is—to go back over and over.

Sippy: Tenacity?

McCurry: That’s also part of it. But you also have to try and be fresh and not think, “I’ve been here before.” You have to keep yourself open. Because if I went with, say, students, and I went back to the same place, they would think, “This is really boring. We were just here earlier, why are we repeating?”

But they wouldn’t understand that that’s actually a way to really dig deeper.

Sippy: How do you feel about the places you’ve travelled to as you return to them? How much have they changed?

McCurry: Well, I’ve noticed in Varanasi, where I started, it’s gotten a lot more touristy. And this was a city that Hindus came to bathe and to be cremated. On the ghats, there used to be all these roaming bands of kids, with no thought about where they were or what they were doing. They were just kids from the neighbourhood.

Sippy: And now they’re more conscious of being there?

McCurry: They’re on their phones.

Sippy: Do you still have that wanderlust? Are you still travelling and shooting?

McCurry: Actually, I don’t travel as much as I used to. I went to Italy—I was there for one event, then I went to a workshop in Naples, followed by an assignment in another region, Umbria. Then I went to shoot a music video in Cairo, on the Nile. I was the director, with a director of photography handling the camera.

Sippy: You’ve brought this entire world, one that people in the West have really not seen much of, to the West. How much of America have you shot?

McCurry: A bit, not so much. I haven’t really explored it. Partly because I’m more curious about other places. I’ve often thought I should do a road trip. I want to do it out of a sense of obligation.

Sippy: Yeah, not because it’s in your heart?

McCurry: I think it’d be fun—it’s just that I know how I work, and I know the States. If I’m just driving around, I’d start to get very impatient. Here, if you drive around Bombay [Mumbai], you’re going to see a million things. Whereas if you drive around, say, Cleveland...

Sippy: A lot of younger photographers today are focusing on their doorstep—what’s happening right outside your home or even within your home—because the travel thing has become so over-exploited.

McCurry: Well, you can always go a couple of streets off the beaten path. Life is pretty ordinary, you know, even in places like Venice. When I was in Myanmar—I may have been there for a week or 10 days—and I saw two or three tourists. That was it. There were some Koreans, some Thais, but I don’t think I saw a single Western tourist. And I was in Bhutan too. I did a book project there with maybe 10 or 12 photographers. Raghu [Rai] was one, I was one, and we had different subjects to shoot.

Sippy: You have said that he was also quite a major influence on you.

McCurry: Yeah, he was. When I first came here, we had a mutual friend that used to work for TIME LIFE in the bureau. I was just getting started without really any assignments, and Raghu was very supportive. He offered suggestions and help. I thought that was really generous because a lot of times, photographers aren’t so forthcoming. People in general aren’t very generous, but I found him to be. We did a story together, and then we did a bunch of other books together.

Sippy: How long have you been working more on books versus shooting—or are you still doing everything?

McCurry: I don’t do editorial photography at all now, almost zero. I haven’t done a magazine assignment since 2004 or ’05. So that’s about 20 years. I’d say in the last 20 years, I’ve gotten more active in books.

Sippy: Let’s go back to the time when you were travelling and shooting the Kodachrome. In those first two years, how were you processing it? How were you doing it all practically?

McCurry: Well, everything had to be shipped back. I’m pretty sure, like in 1978, ’79...

Sippy: So you weren’t seeing what you were shooting. When did you first see it?

McCurry: Well, I didn’t see anything for the first year, over a year. I shipped and I kept working. It’s almost unthinkable now, to ship your film back and not know what you have for months and months.

Sippy: But isn’t there so much relief in that today, I think? Carrying computers, memory cards, transferring data, always looking at a screen, the distraction from the actual act. You can feel it in your photographs. It’s a meditative practice.

McCurry: Absolutely, yeah.

Sippy: When the shift to digital happened, how did you take it? Did you embrace it?

McCurry: Kind of reluctantly. But now I like being able to see the work instantly, to check the light, the composition. So I like that part. The technical stuff I usually let my assistant handle. But now I can’t imagine shooting film.

Sippy: Let’s talk about being entrusted with the last roll. Did you see the film Kodachrome?

McCurry: Yeah. I actually met Ed Harris. He called me and wanted to talk about photography. He had an old Leica which he wanted me to look at. I wasn’t using a Leica at that time, but we had a coffee together, and I’ve always admired him as an actor.

Sippy: Oh, he’s fantastic. And they shot the movie on film.

McCurry: Yeah, that’s right.

[Pause]

I photographed Amitabh Bachchan for the Kodachrome bit [the Last Roll]. I said, can you take your glasses off? And he said, no, that’s not my brand. So we met him at his home. We’re all nervous, because it’s this famous guy, an icon. He has this huge table full of snacks. And of course, we met him, and then we’re told we’re going down to his office. We didn’t touch anything there, nothing at all, because we didn’t want to. They said, ‘Let’s go into the office and do the picture there.’ It was just, like, a portrait of him.

Sippy: What number was it on the roll?

McCurry: Pretty much in the beginning. I photographed

[Robert] De Niro first, in New York.

Sippy: On the same roll?

McCurry: Same roll. And then we came directly to India. Aamir Khan, I photographed him. There were a couple of other personalities, but I can’t remember their names. But the big one was Amitabh Bachchan.

Sippy: I’m just thinking of this single roll of film, and then you’ve done one exposure of Robert De Niro there, then you’re doing one over here, and then one, like that. You just look like somebody who’s very chill doing it. (Laughs)

McCurry: Well, it was a bit nerve-wracking because the guy [at the airport] wanted to X-ray the camera. So I tried to explain, but I think eventually he let me go around it. And then I flew home and did a bunch of pictures in New York. But I photographed the—what are they called—the Rabari people. It was a tribe of, like, Rabari shepherds, they’re kind of nomadic. I flew to—yeah, it was Rajasthan, it was near Mount Abu. Sort of near there. We photographed them there. That’s where I went because I knew a guy who had a farm, and he could get me into the area.

Sippy: What was the last one?

McCurry: You remember the movie, the last place was in Kansas, where they developed the film? So I got to Kansas, and I still had three exposures left. It was like four o’clock in the morning. So I photographed my feet with a TV in the background. And I got up in the morning and I went out and photographed some guy sleeping on a bench. And then the last one, I went to a cemetery. I was really desperate, because I had to be at the lab at, like, eight o’clock in the morning. So I went to a cemetery and there was a Civil War monument with some flowers. It just happened to be red and yellow, the colours of Kodachrome. So I shot that statue.

Sippy: And that was the last one.

McCurry: And that was the last exposure, yeah.

Sippy: And when this roll went into the lab, you were there?

McCurry: Yeah, we filmed it.

Sippy: And you waited for it to come. You must have been… Is there anything on this roll? [laughs]

McCurry: Yeah, it was kind of—There was one. Every subject got one exposure, and I think one person blinked, so I had to do a second exposure. Otherwise it was just one. But you know what’s funny? I would be inside, and it was really dark, and the exposure was like a quarter of a second or half a second. But it was, like, I was so used to shooting at [very fast shutter speeds of] 500, a 1000. And suddenly I’m shooting at a quarter per second [with the lens] wide open. Yeah, I had to be really careful.

Sippy: I love those situations.

McCurry: On a tripod and everything. Don’t blink (laughs).That was funny. That was great. So I would shoot—I’d kind of warm up with my digital camera. I would shoot the scene, and then make sure that when I got it, I’d shoot the film.

Sippy: Like a little insurance policy.

McCurry: I just wanted to make sure I had the frame right, and everything.

Sippy: Got it.

McCurry: But it was a fun project.

Sippy: How’s our time? Perfect. Running late? Okay. Gosh, Steve, what an honour! I hope you enjoyed.

McCurry: We’re not done, are we? We’re just getting warmed up. (Laughs)

To read more stories from Esquire India's October 2026 issue, pick up a copy of the magazine from your nearest newspaper stand or bookstore. Or click here to subscribe to the magazine.