SEA Milan Airports is hosting a photographic exhibition by Steve McCurry at Milano Malpensa Airport as part of a cultural program linked to the Milan-Cortina 2027 Winter Olympics.
Titled The World in Motion, the exhibition is located in the check-in area of Terminal 1 and will remain open throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games and beyond. The Games are taking place from February 6 to 22 and March 6 to 15, 2026, respectively.
The project forms part of the Milano Cortina 2026 Cultural Olympiad, a nationwide program designed to promote Olympic values through culture, heritage and sport in the lead-up to the Games.
Created in the months preceding the Olympics, the exhibition features black-and-white portraits of travelers photographed at the airport. Malpensa currently connects to 219 destinations in 84 countries.
“Black and white eliminates distractions,” said McCurry. “It strips the image down to its essence: expression, gesture, presence. In this project, color felt superfluous. What matters is the human face, suspended in a moment of transition.
“An airport is a place where identity, for a moment, loosens its grip. People are between roles, between places, between lives. In that suspension, something profoundly authentic emerges.”
Armando Brunini, CEO of SEA Milan Airports, said the initiative reinforces Malpensa’s role as an international gateway.
“With The World in Motion, SEA strengthens Malpensa’s role as the country’s international gateway in view of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Games,” he said. “Malpensa confirms itself not only as a strategic infrastructure, but as a place of encounter, culture and dialog among peoples, fully aligned with the Olympic spirit.”
According to curator Biba Giacchetti, the project reverses McCurry’s usual approach of traveling the world to photograph remote communities.
“This time, it will not be Steve McCurry traveling to remote peoples,” she said. “Instead, the peoples of the world will pass before his lens, in that suspended instant before a flight, in an airport that is itself already a global microcosm.”
The portraits were taken against a neutral background to emphasize individual expressions and remove contextual hierarchy. The exhibition involved hundreds of participants from around the world.
SEA said the initiative is part of a broader effort to position airport spaces as venues for cultural engagement during major international events.
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