On the publication of her new book Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear, Paula Bronstein will join us in conversation with Christina Lamb to discuss her expansive work that intimately captures everyday life in Afghanistan against the backdrop of the 14-year US-led invasion and its enduring legacy.

Paula Bronstein is an American photojournalist and a multiple nominee and award-winner of international contests including The Pulitzer, Pictures of the Year International, and The National Press Photograher’s Association. Previously a senior staff photographer with Getty Images and for major US newspapers including The Hartford Courant and the Chicago Tribune, she is currently based in Bangkok, Thailand as a freelancer represented by Reportage by Getty Images.

Christina Lamb is the roving foreign affairs correspondent for The Sunday Times. She has been a foreign correspondent for more than twenty five years, living in Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa, first for the Financial Times then The Sunday Times. She is the author of The Africa House, House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-torn Zimbabwe, Waiting For Allah: Pakistan’s Struggle for Democracy, The Sewing Circles of Herat, My Afghan Years and co-author of I Am Malala. Her new book Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World, is based on two decades of reporting from Afghanistan.

Photo: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

Panos Pictures, Reportage by Getty Images and VII Photo all hosted events at the Club and a half-day seminar with VII Photo took place at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. A short video with a selection of clips from Photo Week can be viewed below.

Freelance photographers contributed images for a slideshow which was on display in the Club throughout the week. You can view their contributions in the following video- enjoy!

In an evening of contrast, colour and laughs, Reportage by Getty Images showcased two of their key talents, Peter Dench and Tom Stoddart.

After reviewing portfolios at Getty’s Open Edit with his team all day, Vice President of Photo Assignment for Getty Images Aidan Sullivan introduced the evening with a short overview of the kind of work Reportage by Getty Images engages in. He explained that Reportage, five years old this September, is an autonomous agency within Getty and was launched as:

“an agency [to] represent what we believe to be some of the finest photojournalists working today. We set about creating this website, bringing in the photographers, and I’m very privileged to work with not only some of the greatest photographers around today, but also the greatest editors, many of them are here this evening. It’s a joy to work with them and share their passion, and it is real passion.”

Peter Dench demonstrated some of that passion as he took the audience through a sample of images featured in his crowd-funded book England Uncensored.

“I think it’s appropriate that Tom is here giving a talk tonight as well, because visually we’re both very, very different, but I think we still share the same drive and enthusiasm to tell an engaging story through our photographs.”

Dench‘s playful delivery buoyed the audience along as he provided an irreverent look at this green and pleasant land and its relationship with getting pissed. Full of bright colour, Dench made a point of contrasting his work with Stoddart‘s:

“When I joined IPG Tom […] gave me some advice. He said “Peter, if you photograph a woman in a yellow dress, all you see is the yellow dress, but if you photograph her in black and white, you see her soul”. After I’d wiped up the wine I’d splattered down my top I said “Tom, you’re wasting your breath, all I see is a picture without colour.”

The widely respected Tom Stoddart, who has worked with Aidan Sullivan for 35 years, also picked up on Sullivan‘s comments about passion.

“It’s the one thing that I think that people trying to get into the industry don’t really understand. This is not a job, it’s an existence.”

Referencing the great Don McCullin, who had popped by the Club earlier, and his commitment to photography still at the age of 75, underlined his point.

Like McCullin, Stoddart is known for his images of war and human suffering. Stoddart‘s Perspectives exhibition, featuring classic images of disasterous world events he has covered over the years, opens on the 25th of July to highlight the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Healthcare in Danger campaign.

While speaking of going back to Sarajevo to meet the Bosnian war’s survivors who he had photographed, Stoddart said:

“It’s great- it’s not very often you get the chance to square the circle in our work, you’re normally in someone’s face for 5/100th of a second- I once worked out that I probably worked only 2 minutes in my life”

Stoddart’s work couldn’t be more different from Dench’s, but Sullivan pointed out that they are both storytellers with serious messages behind their work. A true showcase for Reportage, the evening demonstrated how varied their stories can be and the breadth of subject-matter photojournalism can cover.

Watch the event in full or subscribe to the Frontline podcast on iTunes.

View in iTunes

John G. Morris was LIFE’s London Picture Editor on D-Day, and famously saved Robert Capa’s pictures of the landing on Omaha Beach, prints of which now line the stairs up to Frontline’s Forum. He will reflect on his unique career in picture editing and on why Getty Images only recently released the photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Long-suppressed LIFE magazine pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be the focus of John G. Morris’ discussion at the Frontline Club about what, if anything, we have learned from images of war.

Alexander Lindsay, a one-time student of Morris, now a successful filmmaker, will moderate the event. Lindsay made the film Afgan during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which is believed to be the only film by a Western crew with the Soviet forces in combat, and covered both Gulf wars from Iraq. He has since spent five years filming the wreck of the Titanic, creating the largest images of the shipwreck ever made.