Here is Pledge's introduction to the show: Since its inception, dedicated documentary photography as presented in the West has primarily fallen into three major categories: war, revolution, and social ills. This section of the 2009 Lianzhou International Photography Festival draws upon the work of some of the form’s greatest practitioners to illuminate these three strains and the ways in which the Western world has utilized documentary photography as a means of understanding and coping with human conflict and suffering twenty years after the end of World War II and onwards.