Frontlines

Acclaimed war photographer Sean Smith has covered all the major conflicts of the past few years, from the Middle East to the Congo. "Frontlines" brings together some of his finest work, and offers both a chronicle of major flashpoints and a unique insight into modern warfare and its aftermath. Starting with the violence that erupted on the streets of Bethlehem in 2000, when Palestinian youths clashed with Israeli soldiers, Smith moves on to provide fascinating and poignant glimpses of life in Afghanistan before the US-led campaign and then the grim realities of the military onslaught and Taliban insurgency that followed. He bears witness to the devastation wrought in Lebanon by the Israeli bombardment of 2006, and the scenes of chaos in the Congo as the government clashed with Tutsi rebels. But it is to Iraq, the most politically divisive conflict of modern times, that Smith returns again and again. He shows us a society striving to hold itself together in the months leading up to the invasion of 2003. He follows the progress of troops battling against opposition and sectarian attack. And he records the Shia uprisings of 2007 and the US military surge that sought to contain them. This is an extraordinary record of over a decade of conflict, and a worthy contribution to the great tradition of war photography.