UTICA, N.Y. - Steve McCurry's "Afghan Girl" has become so iconic, it's hard to look at the child's haunting green eyes and red scarf without seeing the yellow, National Geographic box wrapped around it.

The photo ran on the magazine's cover in 1985. It was taken at a refugee camp in Pakistan, a stopping point for a girl fleeing from fighting between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. It became an international symbol of wartime suffering. McCurry and National Geographic tracked her down 17 years later to discover Sharbat Gula had survived.

Now, others are questioning the way some of McCurry's photos - including "Afghan Girl" - have been edited and altered. In the original magazine cover, the girl's right eye is clean. In more recent productions of the image, that eye is smudged with dirt. It's an example, critics say, of other more obvious alterations of some of McCurry's famous photos from the past few decades.

In the midst of this controversy, Utica's Munson-Williams Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art is opening "The World through His Lens: Steve McCurry Photographs." The show runs from June 12 to Dec. 31.

"The 'Afghan Girl' is the first you see in the exhibition," said Anna D'Ambrosio, director and chief curator at the museum. "In our image there is dirt in the corner of her eye."

McCurry has defended his past editing and altering decisions by saying he's a freelancer and a storyteller, not a photojournalist. It's a fine line to draw against a body of work that has turned a spotlight on many remote, wartorn and forgotten places in publications like National Geographic.

The show has been in the works for three years, far before this talk about alterations arose. McCurry has promised to come for a talk at the museum this fall; the date has not been set, D'Ambrosio said in early June.

But the museum isn't shying away from the recent criticism facing McCurry, and D'Ambrosio hopes more people will visit the exhibit in Central New York to judge the photos in person.

"I hope that people come and see these images for themselves," she said. "Some of them are a call to action. They show the sheer beauty of humankind...the universality of the human experience. There's no substitute to coming and seeing them in person."

The show features 60 works by McCurry from photographs taken on six different continents. The museum worked with McCurry's studio to curate the show to reflect the history and experiences of Utica's large immigrant and refugee population. More than 17 percent of Utica's 62,000 residents were born in another country, and the small city has been held up as a model for welcoming refugees from all over the world.

The Utica show includes some of McCurry's works from Myanmar, Cambodia, Russia, Crotia, India, Thailand, Nepal, Afghanistan and Cuba. Utica is home to people born in all those countries.

The exhibit also includes 30 portraits of refugees in Central New York by Lynne Browne, a local photographer. The museum has made three videos that include local immigrants and refugees reacting to some of McCurry's works.

D'Ambrosio said she hopes the debate about photo altering and photojournalism will continue. She thinks it should include discussions of works by Civil War photographer Matthew Brady and naturalist photographer Ansel Adams, both of whom took artistic license in some of their images.

Admission to the exhibition is $10 for adults and $5 for students. Museum members, active-duty military members and their immediate families, and children 12 and under get in free. There's no need to buy advance tickets, D'Ambrosio said.

"The controversy should encourage people to come, to not just look at what's on the Internet, so people can make their own decisions," D'Ambrosio said.