-
Raymond and his sons. Darien, Wisconsin, USA, 2007 © Peter van Agtmael / Magnum Photos
Exhibition
No Iconic Images. Views of War
20 Mar 2025 – 4 May 2025
Regular hours
- Thursday
- 10:00 – 17:00
- Friday
- 10:00 – 17:00
- Saturday
- 10:00 – 17:00
- Sunday
- 10:00 – 17:00
- Tuesday
- 10:00 – 17:00
- Wednesday
- 10:00 – 17:00
Free admission
Address
- 19 Mann Island
- Liverpool Waterfront
- Liverpool
- L31BP
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- The nearest bus station is at Liverpool ONE, but some buses drop off at the Pier Head, right next door to the gallery. Merseytravel has details of local bus services.
- By train We are 20 minutes walk from Lime Street station ' Liverpool's mainline railway station. James Street station, served by Wirral Line trains, is a two minute walk. Moorfields station, served by the Northern and Wirral Lines, is a five minute w
Open Eye Gallery presents No Iconic Images, an exhibition exploring contemporary war photography. Featuring Magnum photographers, The Guardian, and Forensic Architecture, it questions how conflicts are visually represented.
About
Open Eye Gallery proudly presents No Iconic Images. Views of War, a thought-provoking exhibition examining contemporary depictions of war.
This exhibition invites audiences to reconsider the power of war photography in shaping collective memory, political narratives, and public perception. As images circulate faster than ever in a digital world, the exhibition raises pressing questions: Do we still need iconic images? How do they influence our understanding of war? And what happens when a single image defines an entire conflict?
In collaboration with The Guardian and Magnum Photos, the exhibition showcases projects by a new generation of Magnum photographers, Peter van Agtmael and Newsha Tavakolian, who offer personal insights into the wars they witnessed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.
The exhibition also delves into the editorial choices behind war photography today, with The Guardian providing a unique perspective on global conflicts, from Haiti to Myanmar. As Fiona Shields, The Guardian’s Head of Photography stated:"The geo-political nature of a conflict will often determine the priority of our reporting", these images drives us to think about how photography shapes and influences our understanding of global crisis.
Investigative works by Forensic Architecture and the Centre for Spatial Technologies reconstruct the 2022 attack on Kyiv’s TV Tower, while artists Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei challenge traditional Western aesthetics in representations of war casualties.
“As the world burns and images circulate faster than ever, it examines recent wars and how they are portrayed and reflected upon through photography”. – Max Gorbatskyi and Viktoria Bavykina, exhibition curators.
Image: Raymond and his sons. Darien, Wisconsin, USA, 2007 © Peter van Agtmael / Magnum Photos
