Word on the streets: "On Reading" by Steve McCurry

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"Reading is a serious matter, but readers are seldom lonely or bored, because reading is a refuge and an enlightenment," says Paul Theroux in his foreword to the photographer Steve McCurry's latest volume of photography, On Reading. In over four decades of travelling round the world creating extraordinary images of conflicts, vanishing cultures, ancient traditions and contemporary culture, McCurry's work never fails to embrace the human condition. This personal collection celebrates the joy of the written word, in homage to legendary photographer Andre Kertesz's volume, On Reading, first published 45 years ago.

Paying tribute to the compelling, absorbing act of reading, the selection of images in McCurry's book spans 30 countries and captures private moments enjoyed by ordinary people on a New York sidewalk, a market in Afghanistan, a monks' seminary in Cambodia, an art gallery in St Petersburg. McCurry, a renowned member of Magnum Photos, finds his subjects in doorways, framed by open windows, on park benches, against the backdrop of struggle, often living close to the edge.

His empathetic eye elevates the everyday into poetic portrayals of life, providing visual testimony to the power of losing oneself in a book, a newspaper, a magazine. McCurry's lens is a witness to the ability of words to transport readers of all ages to imagined or real worlds.

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In recording the pleasure of reading – so clear in his subjects' demeanours – on his travels, McCurry tells the stories of the private interior journeys undertaken, the temporary, cerebral escapes from mundanity, from war, from poverty, to richly engrossing alternative universes, and in so doing honours the transformative power of the written word.

On Reading by Steve McCurry, Phaidon, £39.95; phaidon.com