It had been impossible not to notice, when I arrived at the studio, that McCurry shook my right hand with his left. His right seemed somewhat atrophied. I wondered if there was a story attached to the injury, some feat of photographic daring. If so, I thought I should probably know about it already. If not, it was probably none of my business. But at the end of the interview I ask anyway, and McCurry’s straightforward, modest response leads me to think he has experienced more subtle kinds of valour than those I had been prompting him to recall. “Oh, I broke it when I was five,” he says. “I fell down some steps, and it never quite healed properly.” For a split-second, I try to imagine McCurry as a child. “But it happened at such an early age,” he adds, “that I operate the camera pretty well.”