Exercise: Press release.

Exercise: Press release.

Brighton Photo Biennial.

Images of war come with a special price; the lives of the photographers themselves.  During the the various conflicts in Vietnam, from the French occupation through to the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon, 135 photographers lost their lives or went missing.  During the Iraq conflict 27 photographers died.  The list goes on.  This exhibition is a small tribute to their work.  

In this exhibition you will see pictures covering one hundred years of conflict.  Some were taken by professionals, some by amateurs, some by victims, some by soldiers, and some by tortures.  From live action to the dreadful destruction of cities, this exhibition covers it all.  What is demonstrated here is how war effects all of us.  It is not only the combatant, but also the displaced civilians and the destruction of normal life and the whole fabric of civilisation.  How health, education and normal governance cease to function.   

The most shocking are the images taken by Lynndie England, the Abu Ghraib guard, who abused her position to humiliate and brutalise her prisoners.  These are not pictures taken of her but pictures taken by her.  So proud was she of her brutality that her took pictures of her own crimes.

This is a set of images that, unfortunately, will be replaced be other sets of images of future.  As one conflict ends another begins.  A circle of violence that seems to have no end and to which news editors will send another generation of photographers.   How many times will be repeated the politicians favourite phase, “This must never happen again”.