Bridge the Gap: Multidirectional Memory in Photography Projects for Refugee Youths

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on photo projects organised for teenage refugees by the Society for Humanistic Photography (Berlin, Germany). These projects, named Bridge the Gap I (2015), and Bridge the Gap II (2016), were carried out in Berlin and brought together teenagers with refugee and German-majority backgrounds to experiment with digital photography and create joint exhibitions. Drawing on concepts from memory studies, such as travelling memory and multidirectional memory, the author examines the projects as interventions in German and Berlin memory cultures, and examines how multidirectional memory was produced – and sometimes not produced – within the projects. The importance of memory work in the context of refugee resettlement is often overlooked, but is particularly relevant when cultural encounters are organised in museums and exhibition galleries.

KEYWORDS:

• Multidirectional memory
• travelling memory
• refugees
• photography
• Germany
• organised cultural encounters

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the organisers of, and participants in, the Bridge the Gap II project. She also thanks the two anonymous reviewers and the special issue editors, who all provided very fruitful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Randi Marselis is an associate professor in Cultural Encounters at the Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research examines European memory politics in relation to migration and postcolonial history. She is currently particularly interested in how migration memories and cultural encounters are mediated through digital heritage project and museum exhibitions. She has most recently published on these issues in Museum Anthropology (2016), Memory Studies (2016) and in Global Mobilities: Refugees, Exiles, and Immigrants in Museums and Archives, edited by Amy Levin (Routledge, 2017).

ORCID

Randi Marselis http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1894-6462

Notes

1 The Bridge the Gap projects were established by Gesellschaft für Humanistische, http://www.gfhf.eu/, in collaboration with Freundeskreis Willy-Brandt-Haus, http://www.freundeskreis-wbh.de/, and Internationaler Bund IB, http://internationaler-bund.org.

2 The Bridge the Gap projects were not established with the aim of conducting research, and the author of this article was not involved in the design of the projects.

3 The participants visited the exhibition, Vivian Maier – Street Photographer mit einer Auswahl von 120 Werken (Vivian Maier – Street Photographer with a Selection of 120 Works), which was held at the Willy-Brandt-Haus, Berlin, from 19 February to 12 April 2015.

4 In order to protect the rights and identities of the participants, photographs from the Bridge the Gap exhibition could unfortunately not be included as illustrations in this article.

5 Images and background information about the memorial can be found at Gedenkstättenportal zu Orten der Erinnerung in Europa (The Information Portal to European Sites of Remembrance), http://www.memorialmuseums.org/denkmaeler/view/1484/Z%C3%BCge-ins-Leben---Z%C3%BCge-in-den-Tod#. For more information on Frank Meisler's work, see http://www.frank-meisler.com/kindertransport/#

6 The exhibition Aufbrüche: Bilder aus Deutschland (New Beginnings: Pictures of Germany) was held from 22 March to 23 May 2016 in the Willy-Brandt-Haus, Berlin. It showed photographs from the private collection of Christiane and Karsten Fricke. For more information on the exhibition, see http://www.willy-brandt-haus.de/kunst-kultur/rueckblick/veranstaltung/article/aufbrueche-bilder-aus-deutschland/

7 The photograph discussed was a winter image from Auschwitz II – Birkenau taken in 1992 by photographer Axel Thünker, with the title ‘Auschwitz II – Birkenau, Gleise, Rampe und Hauptwache’. The photograph has been reproduced in Schweigendes Grauen. Ehemalige NS-Vernichtungslager in Polen. Fotografien von Axel Thünker, Bonn 1995.

8 One of the organisers, Doris Enders, kindly provided information on the backgrounds of the organisers. She described her own background as transcultural, as she had a Ukrainian mother and a German father. Her parents had settled in East Germany before her birth.

9 The photograph may be viewed online: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fotothek_df_ps_0000010_Blick_vom_Rathausturm.jpg?uselang=da

10 The photograph may be viewed online: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fotothek_df_ps_0000133_Ruinenlandschaft_mit_zerst%C3%B6rter_Wandlaterne.jpg

11 Of course, the participants may have found that the exhibition stimulated new thoughts and an increased understanding of German society. However, it is beyond the scope of this article to further examine their reception of the photo exhibition.

Additional information

Funding

This research was partly carried out as part of the explorative workshops Borderscapes, Memory and Migration, funded by The Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) during the period 2016–2017.