Archive of Modern Conflict


Archive of Modern Conflict is an organisation and independent publisher based in Holland Park, London, England.
AMC was established in the early 1990s and maintains an archive of vernacular material relating to the history of war, primarily photographs but also manuscripts and objects. Its material is acquired from a variety of sources both national and international, covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It has published numerous books, some of which have won awards, has curated exhibitions worldwide drawing upon its archive, and collaborated with artists.

The archive

The archive primarily contains photographs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both national and international, totalling some 4 million items of professional and amateur photography: snapshots and throwaways, amateur and anonymous, across eras and ages, media and material; discarded personal albums, press photos and entire photographic archives from defunct institutions and publications. It also contains regimental albums, postcards, posters and objects. The material comes from a variety of sources including auctions, fairs and street markets.
The main archive is housed in Holland Park, London, but Archive of Modern Conflict also has archives in Toronto, Canada; and in Beijing, China, through Thomas Sauvin. Its collection has been described as "eclectic and often deeply subversive" and an "eccentric range of photographs".
In 2012, AMC acquired the Matthew R. Isenburg Collection of 20,000 items including daguerreotypes, stereoviews, early cameras and other material at a cost of $15 million. This was the highest sum ever paid for a single hoard of 19th century photographic materials.

Staff and funding

Archive of Modern Conflict does not publish many details of its make-up, but various sources report that it is owned by and receives all its funding from Toronto art collector and billionaire Baron Thomson of Fleet, chairman of Thomson Reuters. Timothy Prus is its founder, an editor and curator; Edwin Jones is an editor; and James Welch is an editor, designer and archivist. Other staff include Kalev Erickson and Tony Cairns.

Publications (selected)