Award-winning photographer Hugh Kinsella Cunningham has spent the past five years in the Democratic Republic of Congo, documenting how different communities have been impacted by the Ebola crisis, the illegal wildlife trade, record levels of human displacement, and the decades of conflict that intersect with everything else. In 2022 he was commissioned by National Geographic to photograph the work of women peace-builders in Congo, and his project won first prize in the documentary category of the Sony World Photography Awards 2023.
The Visualising War and Peace project is collaborating with Hugh Kinsella Cunningham to shine a light on this often-overlooked conflict zone and to explore the impact that photography can have on how we understand peace and peace-building. Our habits of visualising war and peace have a profound impact on how we approach and pursue both. Through this photography exhibition, we want to pose important questions about what peace means to different people in different contexts; what sustainable peace-building involves; what impact women and other marginalised groups can have in peace-building processes; and what we can learn by picturing peace and peace-building from new perspectives.
You can visit our in-person exhibition at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, 5th June – 18th July. For more information and an introduction to some of the photographs in the exhibition, please browse this website.
We are excited to be teaming up with educational charity Never Such Innocence to run workshops for local schools on 6th and 7th June in connection with the exhibition. For more information, please email us at [email protected].
We are grateful to the University of St Andrews’ Impact and Innovation Fund for supporting this collaboration with generous funding.