Award-winning photographer Maggie Steber hosts Auckland workshop

An award-winning photographer has visited Auckland to pass on some of her wisdom to budding artists.

American photographer Maggie Steber has travelled the globe capturing people, and their stories, across 68 countries. Her pictures have won countless awards, including a World Press Photo Award for spot news.

She's also received a Pulitzer Prize during her time as assistant managing editor at the Miami Herald.

But Ms Steber says her passion isn't the photos, but the people.

"It's not just about the picture," she told Newshub.

"It's about the people in the picture, and they're giving you a great gift."

A lot of Ms Steber's work comes out of Haiti, where she's worked for over three decades.

It was an image taken there during mass hunger protests in 1986 that won her a World Press Photo Award.

"People were literally starving to death... this picture shows a little boy trying to take a box of food from beneath a shuttered door, and what happened was that the soldier hit the little boy and he ran away."

But it's her work titled 'Madje Has Dementia' that Ms Steber says is most special.

"Probably the most important work I've done was that I photographed my mother for nine years as she went on this melancholic voyage of memory loss."

She says frequently witnessing tragedy, whether it be close to home, or on the other side of the world, is the toughest part of the job.

"You think, you know maybe this is just too much to see for any one person, but then you turn around and you see great courage and beauty."

Ms Steber was in Auckland for the Festival of Photography.

While here, she hosted a class of budding photographers at Auckland's Manukau Institute of Technology, sharing a life-long passion, of pictures and people, with them.

Newshub.