Taking as its inspiration the time traveling protagonist of Kurt Vonnegut’s cult classic Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim, Tate Modern’s Conflict, Time, Photography eschews the usual chronological approach to war art. Organized by the museum’s photography curator Simon Baker, the highly original exhibition presents works together depending on how long after the event they were taken, whether it be moments, weeks, years or decades. 

“I literally lived right through apartheid and left the year Mandela was released,” says Adam Broomberg of the impetus behind his and creative partner Oliver Chanarin’s participation in the show. “A conflict zone is such a heightened space in which to operate, so it provides a very interesting space to watch how politics, economics and culture function.

Taking inspiration from Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler’s unfinished opera War Primer, “War Primer 2” saw the pair forgo the photography that they are best known for to instead choreograph a site-specific, one-off performance with 18 teenaged army cadets that was performed in January throughout the gallery. Also featured in the exhibition, “The Day Nobody Died” offers startling evidence of Broomberg and Chanarin’s first-hand experience of conflict. A response to the deadliest month of fighting in Afghanistan in 2008, created while the intrepid duo were embedded with British army units on the front line in Helmand Province, the installation is made up of highly abstract, overexposed images of the events that they witnessed.

Regarding Conflict’s unique approach, Broomberg says: “It’s interesting because it breaks any normal, sentimental reading of these things. It breaks the attempt to draw parallels between these different conflicts because they are all insane."

Conflict, Time, Photography runs to March 15 at Tate Modern, London.