Open Eye Gallery’s Symposium: On War Photography opened the floor to discussions of conflict photography in a broader context of global unrest, a changing media landscape, and ongoing work towards international legal action against major heads of states.

The conversation took on different forms—from Evgeniy Maloletka’s (chief photographer for Associated Press) powerful testimonial of his time in Mariupol under siege, to the charismatically open-ended Q&A with Peter van Agtmael (photographer, Magnum Photos)—but topics recurred throughout the day, including the importance of preserving context, the rise of civilian coverage and social media circulation, and what it means for a photograph to be iconic.

On War Photography: Symposium will be available to view on our Youtube channel. 

Curating images of war. Photography of conflict in museums and galleries. 

To begin, Open Eye Gallery’s director Sarah Fisher moderated a panel discussion between curators of OEG’s No Iconic Images, Max Gorbatskyi and Viktoria Bavykina, and Historic England’s curator Tamsin Silvey.

Tamsin Silvey introduced her doctoral research tracing a shift in the typical presentation of conflict photography in major UK museums. Her thesis marks the proliferation of conflict images exhibited as a consequence of 9/11 and the ensuing US ‘War on terror’, and a change in curatorial style influenced by a rightwards trend in British policy. Although this shift is marked by a trend towards more conservative ‘white cube’ displays, she also made the argument that the aesthetic dimension of conflict photographs is a necessary component that engages the viewer to then dig deeper into the context, through texts.

Curators of No Iconic Images, Max Gorbatskyi and Viktoria Bavykina introduced the online platform Ukrainian. Photographies., and detailed the urgent motives behind its formation as an online platform in 2022 (building on the Ukrainian Photography organisation begun in Ukraine, 2020). The pair contemplated how the aesthetic dimension of curating might inadvertently elevate a photograph’s iconic status, drawing on their experience of commissioning and curating photographic projects. The key debates: does aestheticism have a place in the curation of war photography? How do you give equal weight to context in a setting where aesthetics dominate?

Read Tamsin Silvey’s PhD Thesis: “Conflict-photography-exhibition: curating conflict photographs in British art and history museums, 2010-20.”

Ethics and aesthetics of war in the global journalism and media. 

The second portion of the morning saw Vid Simoniti, philosopher and academic at University of Liverpool, interview Fiona Shields about her role as Head of Photography at The Guardian, who shared her strong belief in “the importance of photography for telling the vital stories of our day.”

Shields touched on the rise of digital publishing in journalism. Although expanding the scope of images published, it is nothing in contrast to the sheer numbers of images that she sifts daily—approximately 30,000, at The Guardian. Shields spoke about how editors approach this mammoth task. Equal parts rational and intuitive, she explained how the editorial process initially relies on gut-reaction, pointing out that the time at which an image is received from a source is often the very same moment that the newsroom becomes aware of an event. She stressed that images that grab her attention and empathy are set aside for further critical scrutiny later, emphatic that it is this critical pause that differentiates hallmark journalism from social media’s rapid image circulation, ethically speaking. Similarly, she explored how coverage that is also rooted in a study of everyday life under war, foregoing iconicity, humanizes and affords dignity to the victims of war.

In the eye of the storm. Photographers in the centre of violence. Risking life and making crucial images. 

In conversation with Diane Smyth, editor of the British Journal of Photography, Evgeny Maloletka (chief photographer for Associated Press) offered a harrowing testimonial of his experience photographing Mariupol in February and March 2022, at the very inception of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Having covered the war in Ukraine as a photojournalist since 2014, Maloletka related the shock he experienced on arriving in the Donbas region prior even to a wide-spread comprehension that Ukraine had been invaded.

As he related some of the atrocities he witnessed and documented—hospital strikes and mass burials—the importance of the work he undertook to document these occurrences was underlined by an account of the psychological and propagandist tactics employed by the Russian state and state media. The striking mutability of truth in these circumstances and the deliberate erosion of trust in photographs led Diane Smyth to pose the vital question: does Maloletka worry about the loss of control that releasing his images into circulation (and potentially into iconicity) signifies? Maloletka made clear that the urgent desire to spread awareness and understanding of the situation greatly outweighs this concern.

Smyth and Maloletka also discussed editorial ‘red-lines’ when it comes to graphic content. Relating an instance in which his photograph showing a person’s body on fire was cropped by a news outlet to remove this graphic detail, Maloletka says “Maybe they will not publish it, but they will see it.” Confident of the disquieting effect that conflict photography can have on the viewer, Maloletka makes the point that the purported ‘trauma’ of viewing such an image is wildly distinct from that of taking it or otherwise having been present. We might see the burning body through the photograph, but (unless we share similar trauma) we will never also smell it. This is a brutally visceral and astute statement and it is one that hung in the air for the rest of the day’s discussion.

Photography as evidence. Use of photography in Holocaust trials and photography’s role as evidence today. 

In the afternoon, two speakers took to the stage to cover photography’s place in legal proceedings on an international stage: Max Houghton, Course Leader for the MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College​ of Communication, University of Arts London, and Hanna Oliinyk, a researcher at University of Oxford’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies.

Houghton offered a thorough exposition of her doctoral research into the prosecutorial aesthetics, and use of film and photography, which framed the 1945-46 Nuremburg trials of senior Nazi Leaders. Key takeaways included the surprising influence that Soviet documentary aesthetics held over the films admitted as evidence in the courtroom, as well as links to the dominant photojournalistic style of American magazines such as Life or Time. 

Hanna Oliinyk introduced research on the scope of evidence that will be used by Ukrainian and international legal professionals while prosecuting Russian war crimes. Presenting several channels through which Ukrainians have recourse to submit photographic evidence of suspected war crimes, she illustrated the rigorous qualifications that must be met for a photograph to be admissible and explained how these channels represent a significant democratisation of the prosecutorial process. 

Photography of war: journalism, documentary, art? 

The day concluded with Max Gorbatskyi interviewing renowned Magnum photographer Peter Van Agtmael, who has worked extensively in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, and at home in the USA. The interview was a candid take on his relationship to war, American identity, and how he views his own work as a photographer, unwillingly to be confined only to the label of ‘war photographer’.

Delving into his background in History at Yale (with no formal photography training) and his route into 15 years photographing war, Van Agtmael described the naivety, idealism and youthful masculinity that led him on this path. And how, finding himself in Iraq, his formerly straightforward version of American identity and militarism became muddied by the “many paradoxes” he found in an “illegal and violent war.”

He discussed how the contradiction of fantasy and reality in wartime Iraq came to shape his practice and style. That is, a style laden with visual contradictions, often surreal, that speak to his obsession with “paradox.” His personal account of disillusionment brought into sharp focus the theme of iconicity that recurred throughout the symposium. Again, it was asked: how might iconic images obscure historical truth while still shaping political consciousness? 

 Peter Van Agtmael’s Look at the U.S.A.

With thanks to all the speakers, and for the support of the British Council in Ukraine in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute, and the Cultural Diplomacy Foundation within the framework of the UK–Ukraine 100-Year Partnership.

Text by Hazel Archer. Images by Rob Battersby