Peter-Van-Agtmael on The Click

The shot that shows the absurdity of war: Peter van Agtmael’s best photograph

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

‘US soldiers would look for “suspected terrorists” in Iraqi homes and usually find nothing. This could be my grandma’s living room – it shows that insane violence can continue amid normal life’

Bearing Witness to American Exploits | The New Yorker

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Bearing Witness to American Exploits

Peter van Agtmael’s images of war and domestic strife are arresting and almost cinematically spare, but it is the careful narrative arc of his new book, “Look at the U.S.A.,” that deepens the viewer’s experience.

via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/bearing-witness-to-american-exploits

Peter van Agtmael’s images of war and domestic strife are arresting and almost cinematically spare, but it is the careful narrative arc of his new book, “Look at the U.S.A.,” that deepens the viewer’s experience.

Episode 107: Peter van Agtmael (Conflict Photography)

Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Episode 107: Peter van Agtmael (Conflict Photography)

Peter van Agtmael is a documentary photographer based in NY. Since 2006 he has concentrated on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a member of Magnum Photos

via A Photojournalism Podcast for Everyone - A Photojournalism Podcast by Photojournalists for Everyone: https://10fps.net/2024/05/21/episode-107-peter-van-agtmael-conflict-photography/

Since 2006, his work has largely concentrated on the United States and the post-9/11 wars.

https://10fps.net/2024/05/21/episode-107-peter-van-agtmael-conflict-photography/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=episode-107-peter-van-agtmael-conflict-photography

Peter van Agtmael: “I Try to Criticize Myself and Criticize the Country at the Same Time” — Blind Magazine

Fri, 15 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Opening April 14 at the Bronx Documentary Center in New York, Look At The USA gathers photographs from 17 years of photographer Peter van Agtmael’s work to draw a complex picture of post 9/11 America.

via Blind Magazine: https://www.blind-magazine.com/en/news/peter-van-agtmael-i-try-to-criticize-myself-and-criticize-the-country-at-the-same-time/

Essentially, what I thought I knew about the country was soon being dismantled by what I was seeing with my own eyes. It was the feeling that something was wrong about how I perceived the United States and its place in the world, in its history and its own present. Dozens of questions turned into hundreds. They don’t necessarily get answered fully in the work, which is anyway open ended, but at least they get explored.

# 75 Peter van Agtmael – 10 Frames Per Second

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

http://10fps.net/75-peter-van-agtmael/

This week we talk with Magnum photographer and photobook publisher Peter van Agtmael about his new book Sorry for the War and his 2020 Yearbook. We also discuss issues facing Magnum in the future.

Blind - Peter van Agtmael Chronicles the Frontlines of War in the 21st Century

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Peter van Agtmael Chronicles the Frontlines of War in the 21st Century

Magnum Photos member Peter van Agtmael shares his journey as a conflict photographer, and the importance of adopting an open, questioning approach to photojournalism.

Link: https://www.blind-magazine.com/en/stories/1272/Peter-Van-Agtmael-Chronicles-The-Frontlines-Of-War-In-The-21st-Century

While at Yale, van Agtmael also developed a more critical approach to the mythos of America he had consumed as a youth. His friends, Chesa Boudin, now the District Attorney of San Francisco, and Sarah Sillman, currently a staff writer at The New Yorker, shared their perspectives on “how power is used to manipulate people across the political spectrum into a status quo narrative of the nature of American power and justice,” helping him to see beneath the surface of things and find a new way to engage.

The Twenty Years War | Conscientious Photography Magazine

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Twenty Years War

via Conscientious Photography Magazine: https://cphmag.com/the-twenty-years-war/

Peter van Agtmael has been documenting the Twenty Year War since its very beginning. I first spoke with him in 2007 and then again ten years later. He has published a number of books, all of them essential records of a country too embroiled in its own senseless militarism to recognise the folly of it all. There’s Disco Night Sept. 11, there is Buzzing at the Sill, and now there is Sorry for the War.

Peter van Agtmael’s Absurd, Grotesque Chronicle of the Fallout from the Iraq War | The New Yorker

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Peter van Agtmael’s Absurd, Grotesque Chronicle of the Fallout from the Iraq War

Van Agtmael’s images in his new book, “Sorry for the War,” highlight all the little ways in which the war twists and perverts whatever it touches, over there as well as over here.

via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/peter-van-agtmaels-absurd-grotesque-chronicle-of-the-fallout-from-the-iraq-war

For a decade and a half, Peter van Agtmael has been photographing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and their human fallout around the globe. In 2014, he published “Disco Night Sept 11,” which chronicled some of the more unexpected echoes between the wars overseas and the home front between 2006 and 2013. His new book, “Sorry for the War,” focusses on Iraq but roves farther afield. It includes images of refugees in Europe, U.S. military veterans Stateside, victims of an isis terrorist attack in Paris, an American guard at Guantánamo, and an Iraqi civilian injured in the battle of Mosul. Each individual picture is startlingly rich and lucid. Cumulatively, though, they present the viewer with a riddle: What can we learn from this body of work as a whole?

13 Photographers on Turning Points in Their Work - Aperture Foundation NY

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

13 Photographers on Turning Points in Their Work

Elliott Erwitt, Zun Lee, Alec Soth, and more on the turning points in their photographs—from global and national events to the most personal moments.

via Aperture Foundation NY: https://aperture.org/blog/13-photographers-on-turning-points/

Turning points in the lives and works of photographers often span the extremes—from global and national events to the most personal moments. Photographers such as Alec Soth and Zun Lee are able to not only bear witness to events that shape our collective history, but also to map more intimate transitions within their craft and their everyday lives.

Turning Points: Life-Changing Moments by Magnum Photographers - Photographs and texts courtesy of Magnum Photos | LensCulture

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Turning Points: Life-Changing Moments by Magnum Photographers - Photographs and texts courtesy of Magnum Photos | LensCulture

From iconic images of major world events, to intimate moments of pleasure and delight — here is an outstanding selection of remarkable images from Magnum Photos — each with a personal story

via LensCulture: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/magnum-photos-turning-points-life-changing-moments-by-magnum-photographers

From iconic images of major world events, to intimate moments of pleasure and delight — here is an outstanding selection of remarkable images from Magnum Photos — each with a personal story.

A Brief Visual History of ISIS by Magnum Photos | Time

Mon, 14 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

These Photos Show the History of ISIS

A special photography project traces the group visually, from colonialism to the group’s modern atrocities

via Time: http://time.com/longform/isis-visual-history-magnum-photos/

ISIS, that much feared, reviled, celebrated, media-savvy and somewhat phantasmagoric entity, “promotes itself much less through a coherent ideology than via the equivalent of an aggregated, gigantic snuff-selfie,” writes Peter Harling in A Brief Visual History in the Time of ISIS, the first issue of the photo-based publication Magnum Chronicles. According to photographer Peter van Agtmael’s introductory statement, Magnum Chronicles will be published on occasion to provide timely reflections on issues of critical importance, utilizing imagery by the agency’s photographers to create a kind of first draft of history.

Peter van Agtmael: Buzzing at the Sill | LENSCRATCH

Tue, 21 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Peter van Agtmael: Buzzing at the Sill

With the widespread uncertainty and fear over the increasingly exposed divisions in the United States, I hope this work can give perspective on the rarely seen corners of this dense, complex, and troubled nation. Moving through the vastness of America the

via LENSCRATCH: http://lenscratch.com/2017/02/peter-van-agtmael-buzzing-at-the-sill/

Peter van Agtmael’s new monograph, Buzzing at the Sill published by Kehrer, is a timely collection of images of a more challenged America, a sequel to his well-celebrated book, Disco Nights September 11th. Expanding on his work created during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2006 to 2013, and their impact back home, Buzzing at the Sill, shows us a country in flux, a country in crisis, and more importantly, a country in need of better days

Peter van Agtmael’s Decoding of American Violence - The New Yorker

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Peter van Agtmael’s Decoding of American Violence

At a moment when the country’s divisions feel otherwise inscrutable, the photographer’s work delivers new ways of seeing American violence and fortitude.

via The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/peter-van-agtmaels-decoding-of-american-violence

On the eve of Donald Trump’s Inauguration, I rode the train from New York to Washington, D.C., with a book tucked in my bag like a private salve. The volume—a new photo collection by Peter van Agtmael, called “Buzzing at the Sill”—doesn’t radiate comfort in any obvious sense. Its cover is ominous: a copper image of a buzzard with its wings outstretched; we learn, from the book’s text, that the bird banged at the window of a U.S. military hospital in Texas, where soldiers, badly burned in Iraq and Afghanistan, struggled to recuperate

Magnum, Photography, Obsession and the Deepest Kind of Love - Interview with Peter Van Agtmael | LensCulture

Wed, 18 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Magnum, Photography, Obsession and the Deepest Kind of Love - Interview with Peter Van Agtmael | By Alexander Strecker | LensCulture

What pushes (Magnum) photographers to obsessively pursue their own perspective? A young, brilliant member of the legendary photo agency reveals the story behind his life-long romance with the medium

via LensCulture: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/peter-van-agtmael-magnum-photography-obsession-and-the-deepest-kind-of-love

At this year’s World Press Photo Award Days, LensCulture’s managing editor Alexander Strecker sat down with van Agtmael for a wide-ranging discussion about the photographer’s work, Magnum, myths in photojournalism and much more. This is an edited transcript of their conversation:

Why Facts Aren’t Always Truths in Photography | TIME

Fri, 13 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Why Facts Aren’t Always Truths in Photography

Peter van Agtmael addresses the controversy behind Steve McCurry’s manipulated photos

via Time: http://time.com/4326791/fact-truth-photography-steve-mccurry/

Photographer Peter van Agtmael addresses the controversy behind Steve McCurry’s manipulated photos -> I don’t take issue with most forms of manipulation, but deception isn’t acceptable.