Steve McCurry’s “Immersion” at Polka Galerie, Paris: Inside the Archive Behind the Icons

Some photographs are so famous they stop being looked at. The portrait of Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed girl photographed in a refugee camp in Pakistan in 1984, has been reproduced so often that it can feel less like a picture than a logo. Polka Galerie’s answer is to take us behind it. Steve McCurry’s “Immersion” at Polka Galerie, Paris, from 12 November 2026 to 16 January 2027, hangs the photographs on the walls and runs, at the same time, four short films about the man, his studio and the vast archive from which those images were chosen.

Who Steve McCurry is

McCurry was born in Philadelphia in 1950 and lives in New York. He studied at Penn State’s College of Art and Architecture and has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1986. His honours, as listed by Polka, include the Robert Capa Gold Medal, four World Press Photo prizes in a single year, the Olivier Rebbot Memorial Award twice, and the Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal; in 2019 he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame. For four decades his name has been shorthand for a certain kind of image: saturated colour, a human face held in exact composition, a sense of distance collapsed into intimacy.

An exhibition that films its subject

“Immersion” is a format, not just a title. It is the second edition of a series Polka launched with Joel Meyerowitz, built on the idea that seeing how a photographer works changes how we see the photographs. In September 2026, Polka’s director Adélie de Ipanema and filmmaker Florent Lacaze spent three days with McCurry in Pennsylvania, filming his house, his everyday routine and the streets of Philadelphia.

The result is four films of about fifteen minutes each. One looks at the studio, where images are selected and assembled. Another explores his archive — nearly 1,000 square metres of it, according to the gallery. A third and fourth turn to his working method. They play on screens while the prints hang nearby, so a visitor can move between a finished photograph and the process that produced it. Original music is by Martin Rappeneau, and the project is supported by Leica.

The discipline of waiting

What the gallery text emphasises most is patience. McCurry is shown in Philadelphia observing, waiting, sometimes not taking a picture at all until a connection with his subject forms. It is a useful corrective to the myth of the lucky instant. The images that seem effortless are, on this account, the residue of long hours of looking, and of a selection process carried out across an archive the size of a small warehouse.

The selection on the walls follows a route through India, Pakistan and the United States. It begins, chronologically, with Taj and Train (1983), one of his most celebrated Indian images, and arrives at the portrait of Sharbat Gula — which Polka, without irony, calls “la Joconde de la photographie”, the Mona Lisa of photography. The comparison is telling: like Leonardo’s painting, the picture has become a mirror for every debate about who gets to look at whom.

Polka and the Marais

Polka Galerie sits in the Cour de Venise, a cobbled courtyard off rue Saint-Gilles in the Marais, surrounded by some of the densest concentrations of galleries in Paris. The gallery is devoted to photography, and its “Immersion” series is a deliberate attempt to show the work behind the print as well as the print itself. On the same opening night, the gallery is also inaugurating other photography shows, making the 12 November vernissage — with McCurry present and signing books from 7pm — a natural evening for photography lovers.

Why it matters

For collectors of photography, McCurry’s prints are among the most recognised in the market, and seeing them next to material about selection and printing offers context that a catalogue rarely provides. The films also make a case for authorship: the photograph as a decision made over time, not just a click.

For painters, there is more here than one might expect. McCurry’s colour is constructed with a painter’s logic — a red scarf against a dusty wall, a turquoise door balancing a saffron robe — and his compositions often rest on classical geometry. Watching him wait for the elements to align is close to watching a painter decide where to put the last stroke.

Visiting information

Polka Galerie, Cour de Venise, 12 rue Saint-Gilles, 75003 Paris. 12 November 2026 – 16 January 2027; opening Thursday 12 November, 6–9pm, in the presence of the artist. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am–7pm; free entry without booking. Tel. +33 1 76 21 41 32, [email protected]. See the official Immersion exhibition page, our Steve McCurry Paris listing, and more openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.