No human activity evokes a more profound emotional response than warfare. Homer’s Iliad, Goya’s The Horrors of War, and Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem are among the finest works of art inspired by our ostensibly innate urge to destroy one another. Because it positions societies and individuals in the most dire of circumstances, war provokes the most extreme responses—both positive and negative. It is no wonder that photography has kept company with death ever since cameras were invented in 1839.

Our curatorial mission here was not merely to chronicle conflicts around the world. It was to illuminate the social and political complexities of the human condition during war and its aftermath. The meanings of photographs are never fixed, are not contained solely within the photographs themselves, and rely on a combination of the viewer’s sensitivity, knowledge, and understanding and the specific context in which the image is seen. We have juxtaposed the photographs with poems and quotes to lend further texture to the images. The images are part of an ongoing conversation, not just with the past but also with the future.

The exhibition focuses on the work of twelve international photographers who have dedicated their careers as journalists, documentarians, and artists to depicting the consequences of armed conflict: Amnon Gutman (Ukraine War), Altaf Qadri (Kashmir), Asma Waguih (Arab Spring), Claire Thomas (Palestine), Prashanth Vishwanathan (Mumbai 26/11), Rafiq Maqbool (Afghanistan), and Saumya Khandelwal (Delhi Riots). This exhibition also includes a selection of images from Danish Siddiqui’s collection, and together, these images represent conflicts both past and present that highlight the intersections of modern warfare and photojournalism.

Each day, photojournalists across the world  risk their lives, mental health, and well-being to offer snapshots of humanity’s darkest moments and also, perhaps, its most humane and hopeful ones. As you make your way through the exhibition, which follows no particular order, we ask you to pause, ponder, and walk in the shoes of people in the frame, those not in the frame, and especially those taking the picture.