In the Shadow of War I: Danish Press Photography and the War in Ukraine

The Press Photo of the Year exhibition celebrates Danish photography from 2024, but a recurring motif ever since the very first Press Photo of the Year in 1974 has been war. It has now been three years since Russia attacked Ukraine, and the 'full-scale war' began. What considerations do you make as a Danish press photographer when photographing war? Does the war in Ukraine look different now than it did three years ago?

And what does the photo editor think when quick choices have to be made in the enormous news flow of photographs and through her choices she has to convey the war in Ukraine to a Danish audience? What is a good war photograph? How do you use photography to create an understanding of the war in Ukraine in Denmark? And how do you get visual attention for a war that has lasted for over three years in a media landscape where everyone is fighting for attention?

Since the Danish Union of Press Photographers launched Press Photo of the Year in 1974, the photo competition has evolved along with the changes in the profession, the union’s website states. Is ‘war photography’ an unchanged genre because the most important goal is to photograph the war as it takes place, or has the genre changed historically?

Increasingly since February 2022, we in Denmark have also begun to see ourselves as a country 'in the shadow of war': Everyone now knows the word 'prepping', the Prime Minister's New Year's speech was full of serious words, and the word 'war tax' has entered the political agenda. If the Prime Minister calls for increased awareness that we are living in a new state of war, how can photography show and communicate this 'new' state?

This panel discussion on “Danish press photography and the war in Ukraine” will feature Information's photo editor, photojournalist Sigrid Nygaard, who, by virtue of her job, looks at photographs of war every day, and Politiken's photographer Martin Lehmann, who was in eastern Ukraine on February 24, 2022, when the war broke out, and has travelled and photographed in Ukraine eight times in the past three years. Professor of photography studies from the University of Copenhagen and the Nordic Humanities Center Mette Sandbye will moderate the conversation.

In the Shadow of War II: New approaches to war photography in Denmark

In the Shadow of War II: New approaches to war photography in Denmark

On the occasion of the exhibition Press Photo of the Year at Royal Danish Library, Nordic Humanities Center is arranging two Tuesday conversations with Danish photographers about war and photography.