Bush House, home of the BBC World Service in London, is hosting a new exhibition of some of the most iconic images of war ever photographed.

The exhibition, entitled Covering Conflict, combines famous pictures of key news events from past decades with a contemporary study of the war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. It is a joint project between BBC World Service and the Magnum photo agency.

The images for the exhibition were selected by Robin Lustig, presenter of BBC World Service's flagship news programme Newshour. As part of the joint project Magnum has produced a wider visual exploration of this theme in the Magnum in Motion film which accompanies this exhibition. The film, also called Covering Conflict, combines iconic photographs from the Magnum archive with a commentary from Robin Lustig explaining his choice of images.

"I am hugely ambivalent about the notion of beauty in war, because I don't believe there can ever be beauty in death and destruction - yet the explosive clouds in Vietnam or the oil-covered duck amid the oilwell fires in Kuwait do possess a kind of awful beauty," Lustig said.

Click here to see more Covering Conflict pictures from Magnum

"These images make us stop and think. And that, I'm convinced, is what all reporting, whether in words or in pictures, should aim for."

The exhibition is part of the 75th anniversary season for BBC World Service, which will also include programmes and events themed around freedom of information and media.

Editor for the season, Sara Beck, says "This important anniversary gives us an opportunity to consider what we do and where we are heading. It's a chance to look at how modern news is made, disseminated and consumed and to evaluate how we understand and explain our increasingly complex world."

	Bruno Barbey, Vietnam War, 1972

Meanwhile the Magnum photo agency is marking its 60th anniversary.

The agency was founded by four photographers - Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour - who sought to photograph how the Second World War had changed the world.

The exhibition is open to all staff in the Business Lounge in Bush House until the end of December 2007.