WASHINGTON, DC.- This summer, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design opened a photographic exhibition unprecedented in its scope and ambition, featuring many of the most indelible photographs ever made on the subject of war. WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath revolutionizes our understanding of this momentous subject, immersing viewers in the experience of soldiers and civilians during wartime. WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where it opened in November 2012. The exhibition made its East Coast debut at the Corcoran as part of a national tour.

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY brings together images by more than 185 photographers representing more than 25 nationalities, covering conflicts from the past 165 years—from the Mexican-American War through present-day conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Culled by organizers from more than a million photographs and collections in 17 countries, the landmark exhibition features more than 275 extraordinary images: from 19th-century works by Timothy O’Sullivan and Roger Fenton to Robert Capa’s legendary documentation of the Spanish Civil War and D-Day, to Eddie Adams’s infamous image showing the execution of a Vietcong prisoner, and Susan Meiselas’s groundbreaking coverage of the Nicaraguan Revolution. WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY includes the first print ever made of Joe Rosenthal’s legendary Old Glory Goes Up on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima (1945). Among the photographers included are such notable figures as Abbas, Diane Arbus, Shimon Attie, Richard Avedon, Dmitri Baltermants, Felice Beato, Cecil Beaton, Nina Berman, Margaret Bourke-White, Bill Brandt, Larry Burrows, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Carolyn Cole, Donna DeCesare, Luc Delahaye, Alfred Eisenstadt, Dan Eldon, Alexander Gardner, Phillip Jones Griffiths, Lori Grinker, Tim Hetherington, Chris Hondros, Evgeny Khaldei, Don McCullin, Lee Miller, James Nachtwey, Simon Norfolk, Gilles Peress, August Sander, W. Eugene Smith, David “Chim” Seymour, Gerda Taro, Larry Towell, Nick Ut, Damon Winter, and Georgi Zelma.

Rather than presenting a chronological survey of wartime photographs, WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY is organized into more than 30 themes according to war’s progression, including “Media Coverage and Dissemination,” “Patrol and Troop Movement,” “The Fight,” “Aftermath: Grief and Burials,” “Refugees,” “Children,” “Faith,” and concluding with “Remembrance.” These sections demonstrate how certain types of photographs are repeatedly made during the many stages of war—regardless of the size or cause of the conflict, the photographers’ culture, or the era in which the pictures were made.

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY was organized over ten years by a team of curators, led by preeminent photography historian Anne Wilkes Tucker and guided by the insight of an international advisory board of military historians, art historians, and scholars. At the Corcoran, WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY was overseen by Paul Roth, senior curator and director of photography and media arts.