There could be no better place to host the exhibition Children, from the great American photographer Steve McCurry, than the Museo degli Innocenti, one of the oldest Italian public institutions responsible for child protection.

100 photographs will be exhibited until October 8 on the first thematic exhibition dedicated to the childhood. The shoots were taken in almost fifty years of activity and portray children from every corner of the world in scenes of everyday life. A gallery of surprising portraits that tells the story of childhood in all its facets with a characteristic common to all, the gaze of innocence.

Different but the same

The children immortalized by McCurry’s lens are different in ethnicity, clothes and traditions but express the same feeling with their inexhaustible energy, joy and ability to play even in the most anomalous and difficult contexts, often determined by social, environmental or conflict conditions.

Thanks to his extraordinary narrative ability, each image is a real chapter of history that becomes a window on the life of the subjects captured by the lens, capable of expressing the essence and passion, in this case, for children, whose manages to convey the genuineness and light-heartedness of pure beings.

The Florence exhibition begins with an extraordinary series of portraits and develops between images of war and poetry, of suffering and joy, amazement, and irony. The visitor will ideally follow McCurry on his travels through India, Burma, Japan, Africa up to Brazil, meeting the most distant ethnic groups through the most disparate social conditions, highlighting a human condition made up of universal feelings and gazes whose pride affirms the same dignity.

McCurry Children is a journey into childhood to meet little human beings who face such different conditions, but who speak a language in which everyone can identify. A journey also in the memory of one’s childhood, and a starting and a hint for reflection on the responsibility we have towards the new generations, in the awareness that the dream of a more just future depends on the actions of our present.

For info and tickets, click here.