The Terrorist Image: Decoding the Islamic State's Photo-Propaganda

The summer of 2014–when the Islamic State seized Mosul, Iraq’s second city; captured vast swathes of eastern Syria; and declared itself a latter-day Caliphate–marked a turning point in the history of photography, one that pushed its already contested relationship with reality to its very limits.

Uniquely obsessed with narrative, image management and branding, the Islamic State used cameras as weapons in its formative years as a Caliphate. The tens of thousands of propaganda photographs captu...