Magnum Photos Event

Failing Leviathan: Thomas Dworzak in conversation with Dr Julian Stallabrass 

When:

Jun 20 -

Where:

National Civil War Centre

14 Appletongate Newark


Saturday 20 June at the National Civil War Centre, Nottinghamshire
3pm

In conjunction with the exhibition launch of Failing Leviathan: Magnum Photographers and Civil War, Thomas Dworzak will join exhibition curator Julian Stallabrass to discuss Thomas' photographic career and explore his approach to documenting conflict.

Failing Leviathan: Magnum Photographers and Civil War is the inaugural exhibition at the National Civil War Centre. Curated by Professor Julian Stallabrass the exhibition will trace the ways in which civil conflict and its photographic depiction have co-evolved.

The exhibition features the work of eleven Magnum photographers encompassing eleven conflicts: from Robert Capa’s coverage of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 to Thomas Dworzak’s ‘Magnum Instagram Scrapbooks’ probing recent events in Ukraine. Shown here for the first time and made specifically for this exhibition, Dworzak’s project charts images that have run out of control - the pictures that of atrocities that soldiers have long taken and kept to themselves are now thrown into the digital realm and made public.

The works on display provide the means of exploring complex historical and contemporary conflicts and the role of the photographer within these. The overarching theme of the exhibition, uniting the images from disparate conflicts, is the ways in which civil war and photojournalism have changed in tandem. The exhibition further explores the subjects of siege and occupation, exemplary violence, old and new media, and routes to peace through the juxtaposition of photographs from different conflicts and disparate ages.

The exhibition title is drawn from philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ work Leviathan, the famous cover illustration of which by Abraham Bosse shows the state as a giant composed of many people. This visual metaphor illustrates the theory that the collected strength of many allows a state to gain a monopoly of violence, which in turn ensures peace for those content to be governed by the colossus. Failing Leviathan examines the connection between failing states and the weakened news media, which are part of the same political and economic ecology, and photography’s role within this.

The following photographers are featured in the exhibition:

Ian Berry | Werner Bishof | Michael Christopher Brown | Robert Capa | Thomas Dworzak | Philip Jones Griffiths | Tim Hetherington |Susan Meiselas |Moises Saman | Jerome Sessini | David Seymour

<a href='http://www.nationalcivilwarcentre.com/visitus/events/magnumphotosinconversation.php' target='_blank'>More information</a>