Hemisphere

Opening shortly after the death of photojournalist Tim Hetherington in Libya in 2011, this exhibition was a timely investigation into the life of war correspondents and the dangers they face.

Entitled War Correspondent: reporting under fire since 1914, the exhibition was the largest ever held on this subject in the UK and explored both the experience and the impact of war reporting from the First World War to the present day. It set out to investigate the reality of life as a war correspondent: the motivations, challenges and risks they face, as well as exploring issues surrounding changing technology, censorship, objectivity, opportunism and ethics.

Featuring personal stories from iconic war correspondents such as Kate Adie, John Simpson, Rageh Omaar and Martin Bell, the exhibition explored highly topical themes such as how stories from war zones are controlled and manipulated, how technology has influenced and impacted on the role of the war correspondent and what the future holds for war correspondents in this era of citizen blogging and Twitter feeds.

A series of specially-commissioned films from producer-director Chris Salt formed a running narrative through the exhibition, allowing many current and ex-correspondents to communicate directly to visitors about their thoughts and experiences. The films also included contemporary footage shot by BBC correspondents Jeremy Bowen in Tripoli and Caroline Wyatt in Afghanistan especially for the exhibition. Also included in the exhibition were a wealth of artefacts from the Imperial War Museum's archive along with the personal items from some of the featured war correspondents to illuminate the challenging topics aired within the exhibition content.

This was the tenth exhibition that Hemisphere has created for Imperial War Museum North since its first collaboration back in 2003.