‘War/Photography’ at Annenberg Space for Photography

“War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath” includes several pictures that have become icons. But the steady flow of images both arresting and conventional is in some ways more revealing, since they conspire to tell stories far larger and more complex than single images might convey. It makes sense. A military, in order to function effectively, must subsume the individual into the cohesive and uniform mass. Photographers, on the other hand, strive for intimacy. That tension — between disappearance and exposure, the many and the one — emerges as perhaps the most compelling constant throughout the 150-plus photographs in the exhibition. Annenberg Space for Photography, 2000 Avenue of the Stars, L.A. Through Sun. Free. https://www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org.