Imaging Famine was a research project that examined how famine had been historically pictured in the media from the nineteenth century to the present.

The project began as a photographic exhibition at the Guardian and Observer Newsroom and Archive in London in August/September 2005 to mark the twentieth anniversary of ‘Band Aid’ and 'Live Aid' and the 'Live 8' event that summer. It is summarised in a 24-page catalogue that can still be downloaded as a PDF.

The project dealt with the persistence of famine iconography regardless of time and place. It traced the emergence of those images historically – considering the relationship between anthropology and photography and the way photography has been a technology of colonialism – to pose the question of photography’s political effects.

The project sought to move the debate on these issues beyond the unhelpful distinction of positive versus negative imagery and confront the morally complex political question: what if the stereotypical images of starving children remain the images most capable of mobilising a response?