Conversations on Conflict Photography

“Conversations on Conflict Photography” features work by 12 award-winning photographers whose ground-breaking images have often defined global conflicts and through them examines the role of photojournalism in the contemporary world. As photography documents war crimes, human rights violations, and humanitarian crises, it can help bring perpetrators to justice, but it can also be difficult to look at. “Conversations on Conflict Photography” explores the tension between the beautiful and the abhorrent, and looks at the balance of the need to know and the desire to not see. This show offers a shift in focus from traditional war photography, with an emphasis on civilians, social conflict and stillness instead of only the oft-seen combatants, front lines and bombast.

Contemporary viewers interact with photography in ways vastly different than even a generation ago. In turn, “Conversations” permits a variety of approaches to engage with and learn from the photos through text, audio, video, and ephemera. Through the use of interviews with photographers about their experiences of the conflicts they cover and with artifacts of the practice, this exhibition brings a deeper nuance and depth to the images—both the stories they tell and the people they depict.

In a moment often called “image-saturated” and which operates at a more accelerated pace than ever before, this show allows visitors to slow down, think about the work, understand its process, and consider their own responses to the many conflicts that exist right now and the varied forms they take. “Conversations” especially encourages viewers to glimpse the humanity that always exists at the center of strife. This is the starting point for “Conversations on Conflict Photography,” which proposes a productive conversation on these topics, one which inspires education, growth, and progress.

Featuring:

Shahidul Alam, Nina Berman, Marcus Bleasdale, Andrea Bruce, Ron Haviv, Eman Helal, Alexander Joe, Benjamin Lowy, Susan Meiselas, Spencer Platt, Newsha Tavakolian, and Laurent Van der Stockt

EVENTS:

A panel discussion and reception for “Conversations on Conflict Photography” – Wednesday, Oct. 16, @ 6:00 p.m. Free and open to the public, this special event includes: NYU Gallatin Professor Lauren Walsh, author of the just-published book Conversations on Conflict Photography (Bloomsbury Visual Arts: October, 2019) and co-curator of this exhibition with Gallatin faculty member Keith Miller; award-winning photographer Nina Berman (who took the photograph accompanying this press release); and Santiago Lyon, vice president and director of photography for the Associated Press from 2003 to 2016.