Curated by Timothy Prus and Ed Jones for Conflict, Time, Photography at the Tate Modern (26 November 2014 – 15 March 2015), A Guide for the Protection of the Public in Peace Time brought together a disparate and eclectic collection of photographs and objects from Archive of Modern Conflict. The exhibition was presented in a highly unorthodox way, as Prus explains: “One of the atmospheres we were trying to create was of a kind of private, outsider-like museum experience, as you would have in a garage or a garden shed, where a person has curated something without reference to current museum techniques of display.”
Below, curator Simon Baker discusses the archive’s installation within the larger exhibition. “This is [a] completely alternative view of thinking about history and memory and the history of conflict. [W]here the main exhibition has a very clear ordered sequence […] the Archive of Modern Conflict have made almost a collage of memory, of objects from throughout the twentieth century, thinking back to the First World War [and] to wars in the nineteenth century through vernacular objects, albums, [and] photographs.”
