Category: Civil Wars

Explore the human side of civil wars through authentic historical photographs. Witness the struggles, courage, and consequences of divided nations.
These images document key events and personal moments that shaped political and social transformations around the world.

#2 Children playing, probably Derry, 1978

Laughter spills into the street as a knot of children turn an ordinary stretch of pavement into their playground, mid-game and mid-shout. A boy clutches a scuffed football while others dart and grin, their clothes and hair unmistakably of the late 1970s, the whole scene caught with the quickness of a candid moment. The title…
#5 Forensic experts work in a mass grave in the village of Budak, located some two-and-a-half kilometers from a memorial center for the massacre victims

A human skull dominates the foreground of this unsettling scene, half-buried in churned earth while small red flags punctuate the excavation trench like warnings. Nearby, a forensic specialist works close to the ground, surrounded by tools and notes, as other figures stand at the rim of the site under a wide, bright sky. The contrast…
#21 The “Momo” and “Uzeir” twin towers burn on Sniper Alley in downtown Sarajevo as heavy shelling and fighting raged throughout the Bosnian capital on June 08, 1992.

Fire glows through shattered bands of glass as the “Momo” and “Uzeir” twin towers burn above downtown Sarajevo, their dark silhouettes cutting into a pale sky streaked with smoke. From a distance the scene looks almost unreal—two modern high-rises turned into chimneys—while the surrounding city blocks sit in uneasy stillness beneath them. The contrast between…
#37 Forensic expert Sharna Daley of London, front left, examines two bones to find out whether they belong to the same person during exhumation at the mass grave site in the village of Kamenica

At the edge of an open excavation in Kamenica, forensic expert Sharna Daley of London sits front left, gloved and intent, weighing two long bones in her hands as if they were the last pieces of a difficult puzzle. The ground around her is crowded with disturbed earth, scattered remains, and the muted markers of…
#53 A pathologist uncovers one of the 4.000 bags inside of giant refrigerator in Tuzla. The remains of the bodies of Muslim men and boys massacred in eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.

Rows of metal shelving recede into a cold, fluorescent corridor, each level stacked with sealed white bags that turn the room into an archive of absence. At the far end, a pathologist in protective clothing leans over a table, the careful posture suggesting procedure, patience, and the weight of what must be documented. The setting…
#16 Photographers Paul Lowe and David Turnley run for cover beside the Holiday Inn hotel which was home to the media during the war, July 1992.

Along the battered frontage of the Holiday Inn, two photographers sprint for cover with cameras still in hand, moving fast beside a wall of shattered glass. The broken windowpanes and scattered debris on the pavement turn an ordinary hotel exterior into a stark reminder of how quickly a civilian space can be transformed by violence.…
#32 Mothers and children sit talking outside an apartment block during a break in shelling, July 1992.

July 1992 hangs over this scene like a held breath: mothers and children gathered outside an apartment block, using a brief lull in shelling to talk, wait, and steady one another. The foreground woman’s clenched hand and distant gaze carry the fatigue of long uncertainty, while the worn concrete wall behind her hints at a…
#48 Porters from Kosovo Hospital rush a man wounded by a shell to the emergency room, during the Siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia, July 1992.

Urgency drives every line of this scene as two hospital porters push a stretcher at speed across a bare stretch of roadway, the wounded man’s body jolting with each step. Their coats flare with motion, heads angled forward, intent on shaving seconds off the trip to the emergency room. Behind them, stark hospital blocks and…
#64 A frightened woman collects water at a stand pipe during an exchange of gunfire between Bosnian and Serbian fighters, July 1992.

Pressed against a scarred wall, a woman leans out from cover with a look that mixes urgency and dread, as if listening for the next burst of gunfire. Around her feet, a jumble of plastic jerrycans and buckets crowds the ground, the everyday tools of survival in a city where the simple act of getting…
#3 Allan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, and Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand; at the main eastern theater of the war, Battle of Antietam, Sept.-Oct., 1862.

Under a canvas field tent in the Union camp, three figures stand in a quiet pause amid the Civil War’s most demanding season. Abraham Lincoln’s unmistakable stovepipe hat and long coat anchor the scene, while the men beside him—identified in the title as Allan Pinkerton and Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand—frame the president as both…