Thread by @CarlaJeanStokes

War photography exhibitions date back to the mid-19th century. Some of the earliest included images of the Crimea and the US Civil War.

In recent decades, we've seen some excellent exhibitions of #warphotos, and I've listed a few catalogues here below 👇🏽

One of the most important texts that you need to check out is Anne Wilkes Tucker (et al’s) “War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath.” This exhibition was mounted at the MFA Houston in 2012.

War/Photography takes a thematic approach to how wars have been photographed across the decades.

It weighs about 28 lbs to carry, but it's worth the sore arms.

It’s hard to pick a fav First World War exhibition catalogue, but “Shooting Range: Photography at the Great War” is a serious contender. This one has the most incredible reproductions of original objects from 100 years ago, showing that photographs were never actually just b/w.

But having said that, “The Great War: The Persuasive Power of Photography” also shows us some incredible photographic objects from all combatant nations of the First World War.

One of the rooms in this exhibition was actually set up as a reproduction of a real #FWW exhibit of official photographs that was first shown at London's Grafton Galleries in 1917. Yesss.

There have been a few exhibitions of women war photographers in the past few years. The first was “No Man’s Land: Women’s Photography and the First World War,” curated by Pippa Oldfield.

More recently is “Women War Photographers: From Lee Miller to Anja Niedringhaus,” which explores women photographers from a variety of 20-21st century conflicts. Both texts are must-reads for anyone who is interested in women photographers.

And since we’re talking about Lee Miller, Hilary Roberts “Lee Miller: A Woman’s War” is on my exhibition must-read list. Its from a show at the IWM, and it’s on my list because Miller wasn’t just amazing for a woman...she was one of the most incredible photographers. Full stop.

Have you noticed how all of the above historians and curators are women? Well, it’s because women absolutely CRUSH it in this field.

But I’d also be remiss not to mention one of the most canonical Canadian war photo exhibitions. This one dates back to the 1970s, the catalogue was written by archivist/historian Peter Robertson and is entitled “Relentless Verity: Canadian Military Photographers Since 1885.”

I’m intentionally skipping over a few recent exhibitions that do not have catalogues, but I wanna know - who’s seen some great exhibitions of war photography?

(And by that, I mean, who’s been inside a museum in the past 18 months???)