What is a photograph of war?
The camera lens has long shaped how we perceive war and conflict, but cameras were not always portable or pocket-sized. During the American Civil War, photographers like Matthew Brady and Alexander Gardner carried cumbersome wet-plate cameras across the landscape, hauling their darkrooms alongside. Each image was prepared, exposed, and developed beside the battlefield, a collision between the represented and the act of representation itself. In a time when the technology could not capture battle in motion, images such as Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter were carefully constructed to convey an emotional truth. Today, debates around artificial intelligence and digital manipulation continue this long history of questioning what counts as authenticity in documentary war photography. As photography scholar Fred Ritchin notes, “the discussion is not simply about photography but about its usefulness as a medium.”
This exhibition gathers photographs that consider war as both experience and representation. Not all of the photographers are known, nor are all the conflicts officially recognized. The Global War on Terror, which includes Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, frames two of the projects on display: 300m by documentary photographer Ben Brody, which challenges the traditional photographic frame through the use of a 360-degree camera, and images by Iraqi civilians that reveal daily life under U.S. occupation in 2004. Additional works by contemporary photographer Inbal Abergil explore the nuances of second-hand grief and loss through portraits of Chief Notifying Offers and military chaplains in her project Making Peace with Death. Accompanying these portraits is an additional project by Abergil, Next of Kin, which invites viewers into the highly personal circle of bereaved families. From an anonymous soldier's album depicting the mundane day-to-day existence stationed in Vietnam, to early Civil War photographs, these images trace the evolving relationship between the photographic image and war.
