Humanity
The Philharmonic Experience
Featuring the Award-Winning Photographs of Steve McCurry
All Images Copyright Steve McCurry
The 2-minute video trailer above brings to life six of the seventeen movements in Humanity. Steve McCurry’s photographs first meet the audience’s eyes to the shimmer of Ravel’s “Le jardin féerique.” Togetherness takes surprising forms in portraits of family, set to the gentle sway of the “Sicilienne” from Fauré’s “Pelléas et Mélisande.” The innocence of youth unfolds through Ravel’s “Laideronnette, impératrice des pagodes.” The fury of war erupts with “The Tramps Leap Out” from Bartók’s “The Miraculous Mandarin.” The weight of despair settles in with Fauré’s “The King’s Three Blind Daughters.” And the journey ends in pure joy with the triumphant Finale of Stravinsky’s “The Firebird.”
Humanity, The Philharmonic Experience brings together the expressive power of a symphony orchestra with the award-winning photography of Steve McCurry, one of the most celebrated and recognizable photographers of our time. His iconic Afghan Girl has been called the world’s most famous photograph.
Created for leading symphony orchestras seeking to offer audiences a deeply moving artistic experience, Humanity is a singular work in which music and photography are conceived and presented as one unified artistic vision. The program’s soundtrack features carefully curated classical masterworks that illuminate and deepen the emotional impact of McCurry’s extraordinary images. Like a film score, the music guides the audience through a sweeping visual journey that explores the human condition. Together, music and photography create a powerful emotional narrative, resulting in an unforgettable concert experience and an enduring reminder of what it means to be human.
Humanity, The Philharmonic Experience is a complete, fully produced live concert event, ready for performance in 2027, and designed to stand alongside the most ambitious programming of any orchestra season.
Steve McCurry
A Project Partner Bringing World-Class Name Value
Steve McCurry’s name is not a niche credential. He is one of the most widely exhibited photographers alive, and his shows reliably fill halls on their own merits, independent of any orchestra. His touring retrospective ICONS — a ticketed, general-admission exhibition — has been a box office success across major cities globally, promoted as one of the most complete retrospectives of his forty-year career, featuring more than one hundred large-format photographs. His gallery and museum shows draw crowds well beyond the photography world: a 2025–2026 exhibition in Montefalco, Italy drew over 13,000 visitors in five months, a 258 percent increase over the same period the year before, and his work has been shown at major galleries and institutions across New York, Singapore, Austria, and Belgium. That audience — people who will travel to a gallery specifically to see his photographs — is not the same as, but overlaps meaningfully with, an orchestra’s existing patron base and its aspirational single-ticket buyer.
If you want to learn more about exhibition opportunities, schedule a video call with Robb Wagner.