This rotation in the Collection Gallery ranges from the Crimean War (1853–56) to the War in Afghanistan (2001–21). The works challenge us to think critically about how photography documents and disseminates information about war, and how photographers’ approaches to recording war has shifted over time.

Loneliness permeates Adam Ekberg’s whimsical photographs that document the climax of orchestrated events. While the camera freezes them into still lifes, a sense of continuity—like the arc of a story—happens as one realizes that Ekberg (American, b. 1975) invented, manifested, documented, and concluded these events. The objects take on lives of their own, even though we know that such agency is impossible.