Hilary Roberts is a curator of photography. She studied at universities in England and Germany before joining the Imperial War Museum (IWM) Photograph Archive as a junior curator in 1980. As the Archive’s Head Curator (1996 – 2013), she oversaw the development of IWM’s photographic collections and the Archive’s transition to digital photography, before moving to a research role (2013 – 2022). Hilary retired from IWM in 2023 and now works as an independent curator.
A specialist in the history and practice of conflict photography, Hilary has collaborated with photographers, artists, curators, researchers and writers who engage with images of historic and contemporary conflict in every region of the world. She has produced numerous exhibitions, publications and broadcasts. Projects for IWM include Don McCullin: Shaped by War (2010-2012), Cecil Beaton: Theatre of War (2012), Lee Miller: A Woman’s War (2015 – 2016), Nick Danziger: Eleven Women facing War (2016), Edmund Clark: War of Terror (2016-2017) and Sergey Ponomorev: A Lens on Syria (2017). Projects as an independent curator include collaborations with the National Library of Roumania (2023), the National Trust (2025) and the Albabenshal Museum in Siwa, Egypt (2026).
Hilary serves as an adviser to many organisations and has supported the VII Foundation’s work since its inception. She was awarded the Royal Photographic Society’s Award for Curatorship in 2017.
Hilary’s latest book, The Camera at War: 170 Years of Weaponising Photography (Ilex Press, in association with Imperial War Museums and Editions Grund, 2025), is a new overview of the art, applications and legacies of photomanipulation techniques in conflict photography from the Crimean War to the present day. Critics have praised the book, with Luminous-Lint describing it as ‘a brilliant, eye-opening dissection of the intricate interplay between images and the theatre of war’.
