Conflict, Time, Photography - reviews of 'haunting' Tate show

'Innovative' photo show traces the brutal impact and lasting cost of war over 150 years

Bullet-scarred apartment building and shops in the Karte Char district of Kabul.
(Image credit: Simon Norfolk)

What you need to know

A new photography exhibition, Conflict, Time, Photography, has opened today at Tate Modern, London. The exhibition traces 150 years of war photography, from the American civil war and WW1 to Iraq and Afghanistan.

This exhibition organises its images according to the amount of time that has elapsed between the conflict and when the picture was taken, so there are photographs taken moments, weeks, months or even decades after conflicts. It includes images from the Archive of Modern Conflict, photojournalism by Don McCullin, Bill Brandt and Lee Miller, as well as conceptual photo art by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Runs until 15 March.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What the critics like

This moving exhibition is not about photojournalism, but "about remembrance" – about how artists and societies come to terms with the atrocities and traumas of the past, says Alastair Sooke in the Daily Telegraph. These poetic images elicit an eerie sensation that does not resort to mawkishness, but delivers a subtler and more haunting evocation of the past.

This innovative show "drags your imagination into uncomfortable territories" where almost everything is haunted by war's relentless human cost, says Ben Luke in the Evening Standard. It's a sonorous and deeply affecting exhibition that makes a powerful statement about photography and memory.

The images from the Archive of Modern Conflict mix the eccentric with the perplexing and are "alive with reminders of how timeless the patterns of war are", says Tom Coghlan in The Times. They are deliberately contrary and questioning of war photography's tradition of the heroic, bestial and bloody.

What they don't like

"There is little relief from the stark depictions of this exhibition", which focuses on the long-term effects – the scars – of conflict, says Karen Wright in The Independent. But it's an exhibition to linger in, chew upon, contemplate. "I left feeling I know more about my fellow men and women, and perhaps myself, through my responses".

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us