Coffee People

In three decades of visiting coffeelands around the world, photographer Steve McCurry has emphasized the people who grow, process, roast, and brew it. Jordan Teicher describes McCurry's work for Slate and includes a few photos, such as this one showing how coffee is typically prepared in Ethiopia. More of these photos are in McCurry's book From These Hands.

McCurry's work is motivated by the conviction that it is important for people to understand that food comes to us not just from land, but also from people. Ten million people around the world make their livelihood from coffee. McCurry does a great service by bringing a few of them into focus. The work highlights two of the concepts of the geography of coffee that are also explored in Dean Cycon's Javatrekker. First is that coffee connects us to many people across many miles; the other is that since the best coffee is high-grown, it comes from communities that are often quite remote and isolated.