Curator's Choice: Magnum Photos at the National Civil War Centre

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Manager Michael Constantine on the Magnum Photos exhibition at the National Civil War Centre in Newark

"After the Civil Wars of the 17th century, parliament abolished censorship and there was an explosion in use of images. We’ve got some of the famous ones on our walls – Catholics bayoneting, babies jumping off bridges…all that happened, but the extent of it was perhaps exaggerated for effect.

If that was then, what happened in the 20th century and what is happening today? We talked to Magnum and they were very happy to curate an exhibition of their own material through [curator] Julian Stallabrass, of the Courtauld Institute.

In one gallery we’ve got civilian experiences in Madrid and in Syria in 2011. It’s classic black and white imagery: the methodologies of war might change, but the civilian experiences don’t that much. That’s what we’re exploring.

The Korean War [1950-53] was a large-scale one. In their re-education camps the South Koreans tattooed communist prisoners with anti-communist propaganda, which means these guys can never go back.

You’ve got gangs who had to be covertly photographed. The youngest Prisoner of War shown is six years old.

You’ve got a classic photo that you could see in any newspaper of any food wagon in a camp. But then next to it, from the same camp, there’s a Swedish soldier with a fixed bayonet trying to keep people from over-running the wagons because it’s that badly organised. They’ve got an ammunition dump exploding in the camp itself.

We’ve got David Seymour’s photos from the Greek Civil War, taken in 1948. A lot of the digital stuff is from social media in Libya [2011] – people explaining how there were credible alternatives to Gaddafi, so ‘please bomb him’.

What was interesting for me was that when we started looking at the photos we didn’t see adult males. They’re all kids or women. They’re not there because they’re probably fighting or dead.

The staircases are more about peace and reconciliation. You’ve got the widow of a guy who was summarily executed during the Tet Offensive. We’ve got the Mekong Delta, where people are returning to fish even though there are massive bomb craters all over.

Our art galleries are four really nice spaces. We decked them out in historic but neutral colours.

You wouldn’t expect to see Magnum photos here, necessarily - nor in Newark, a beautiful market town. So when you get that whole mix together it does make for something."

• Exhibition runs in the Georgian rooms at the National Civil War Centre until November 5 2015.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

More from Culture24's Curator's Choice section:

Art from Elsewhere: Museums "think and dream and act"

The Happisburgh Hand Axe - the oldest hand axe in north-west Europe

3D guns, Primark trousers and Katy Perry eyelashes at the V&A

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/photography-and-film/art530189-curator-choice-magnum-photos-at-the-national-civil-war-centre