Adam Broomberg (born 11 November 1970 in Johannesburg) is a South African photographer, educator and activist who has been based in Berlin. He is best known as one half of the long-running collaborative practice Broomberg & Chanarin, formed with Oliver Chanarin (born 1971 in London). Durable two-author partnerships are rare in contemporary photography, and this one shifted the couple’s output closer to the project-based logic of conceptual art than to the single-authored documentary tradition. Alongside the studio work, Broomberg has taught and organised, and he is co-founder and coordinator of the NGO Artists + Allies x Hebron, run with the Palestinian activist Issa Amro.

The photographic language associated with Broomberg is appropriative and archival rather than observational. Found press photographs, official publications and existing printed matter are re-photographed, overlaid, resequenced and rebound, so that the question is less what an image shows than how images are produced, circulated and deployed by power. Conflict, violence and institutional authority recur as subjects, but they are examined through the mechanics of the medium itself. The architect Eyal Weizman described the practice as “hacking into the source code of photography,” a formulation that captures its technical and political dimensions at once.

Two books anchor the body of work. War Primer 2 (2011) physically inhabits the pages of Bertolt Brecht’s 1955 publication War Primer, adding contemporary imagery of the so-called war on terror so that the volume becomes a collision between two historical moments; it won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Holy Bible (2013) inserts press photographs into the pages of the King James Bible, and received the International Center of Photography Infinity Award. The two titles show a consistent method: an existing authoritative text is treated as a site, and photography is inserted into it. Broomberg and Chanarin also founded the imprint Chopped Liver Press to publish their own books and those of other artists, keeping production close to authorship.

Institutional recognition followed the books. Solo presentations have taken place at the Centre Georges Pompidou (2018) and the Hasselblad Center (2017), and the work has appeared in the Venice Biennale (2024), Documenta in Kassel (2017), the Yokohama Triennale (2017), British Art Show 8 (2015–2017), “Conflict, Time, Photography” at Tate Modern (2015), the Shanghai Biennale (2014), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014), Tate Britain (2014) and the Gwangju Biennale (2012). The activist strand of the practice, including the Hebron project, extends the same concern with testimony and testimony’s limits into direct organising work.

For photobook collectors, the appeal lies in the fact that these are not exhibition catalogues with a supplementary function; the book is the argument. Page order, paper stock, typography and the rhythm of turning a page all carry meaning, and the reader is made to move repeatedly between two historical registers. War Primer 2 is the clearest entry point for understanding the method, while Holy Bible demonstrates how the same logic behaves inside a differently formatted text. A critical view should note that the work depends on conceptual framing rather than on the seduction of individual images, which divides viewers sharply; its value is intellectual and structural rather than auratic, and collectors drawn to sequencing and design as meaning will find the most to work with here.

Wikipedia’s article on Adam Broomberg is the most widely consulted overview of his biography. It records that he was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is best known for a two-decade collaboration with Oliver Chanarin, working as the duo Broomberg & Chanarin. It summarises their major book and exhibition projects, the awards their joint work attracted — including the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize — and his parallel career as an educator. Because it is continuously updated and cites primary sources, it is a stable starting point for the basic chronology of his life and practice.

The studio website of Broomberg & Chanarin is a primary source maintained by the artists themselves. It presents their shared biography and lists the projects, publications, exhibitions and institutional collections associated with the collaboration, from early documentary commissions in South Africa through the later conceptual books. Because the material is issued by the authors, it is the most dependable place to confirm titles, dates and the shape of the partnership, and to see how the two photographers chose to frame their own working history for public audiences.

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation’s prize archive documents the 2014 award to Broomberg & Chanarin for War Primer 2, their reworking of Bertolt Brecht’s War Primer in which contemporary conflict imagery is pasted over pages of the original book. The foundation publishes shortlist, jury and exhibition information, placing the project within a European institutional account of recent photography. This material matters because it records contemporaneous critical reception and confirms the work’s position in the history of the appropriated-image photobook.

MACK, the London-based photobook publisher, has released several of Broomberg & Chanarin’s books, among them Holy Bible (2013) and War Primer 2. Its catalogue entries document edition details, accompanying essays and awards, and reproduce spreads showing how archival imagery is re-sequenced across the page. Publisher records are important biographical evidence: they fix publication dates and credits, demonstrate the duo’s sustained commitment to the photobook as a primary medium rather than a by-product of exhibitions, and trace the print history of projects now widely taught and collected.

The Guardian’s photography coverage provides independent editorial reporting on Adam Broomberg and his partnership with Oliver Chanarin, including reviews of their exhibitions and news of awards such as the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. Such articles supply dates, quotations and descriptions of individual projects written by journalists rather than by the artists, and are useful for verifying the public record of shows and prizes. As an established publication, the paper’s arts pages offer a reliable, if partial, account of how the photographers’ work was received beyond the art world.