ARCHIVE OF MODERN CONFLICT – AMC Books
Collecting & Publishing

London-based organization Archive of Modern Conflict (AMC) was established in the early 1990s, and specializes in collecting vernacular visual materials relating to war in 19th and 20th centuries. Acquired from auctions, fairs, street markets and private sellers, material has been collected from all over the world and now totals more than 4 million items. The variety of the Archive’s content is wide – printed matter, photographs, family albums, postcards and posters jostle with manuscripts and other objects to give the archive both an historical and an anthropological focus. As the result of building up the collection of materials relating to the history of war, the archive itself is an extremely profound reference about the history of the human kind. The AMC has exhibited at major museums both within the UK and internationally, most recently at the Tate Modern. One of the most remarkable activities of Archive of Modern Conflict is their in-house publishing section called “AMC BOOKS” (amcbooks.com). They produce books that focus on their own collection and are edited and created freely using the archive literally as ‘the materials’ for their artistic approach. They frequently collaborate with contemporary artists and curators to publish works, often subversive and eccentric, and in the process create new insights into the collection. To date AMC BOOKS has produce over 50 titles, including a series of journals called “AMC2” with each issue focusing on a specific aspect of the collection. Their publications have both been nominated and won numerous awards over the last few years. AMC BOOKS is acknowledged as an art publisher with very high quality publications and not just as a publishing section of an archive. They manage to re-edit photographic history into new forms, with such a British, ironic and contemporarily critical mind can be defined as one and only. Their attempt to update the roll of “archive” with contemporary viewpoints, and their brilliant curatorial eyes to collaborate with great artists have created the unique character of the archive which has been praised highly and its footsteps will attract attention from around the world both in art and historical context.

Text: Sawako Fukai