The Camera at War

170 years of weaponizing photography
Drawing on an incredible archive of historic and contemporary imagery, former Imperial War Museum photo curator Hilary Roberts charts over 170 years of photographic manipulation in the causes of national morale, subterfuge and control of the winning narrative.

It is said that the first casualty of war is truth. But in the arena of war photography, the truth is never simple.

Drawing on an incredible range of imagery from the Imperial War Museum's vast collection and other major archives around the globe, expert curator Hilary Roberts presents a new perspective on the role of image manipulation in this field over the past 170 years,exploring the consequences for our understanding of historic and contemporary conflicts.

From the staged scenes and hand-coloured Daguerreotypes of the Crimean War at the very beginning of conflict photography to the AI-generated protest and propaganda imagery of today, Roberts explores the myriad ways in which layers of meaning can be added, erased or changed completely. As The Camera at War so powerfully reveals, sometimes this has been done in order to present a closer approximation of the truth, and sometimes for the causes of national morale, subterfuge and control of the winning narrative.

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