Excerpts from The Chronicle

Abstract

The material Nikita Kadan used when working on The Chronicle exhibition of 2016 included photographs showing torture victims of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in Lvov, victims of local pogroms against the Jewish community, Polish and Ukrainian victims of the Volhynia massacre, and civilians and prisoners of war murdered under Nazi occupation. This photograph-inspired series is a reference to a multiannual phenomenon of photographic manipulation: photographs are distributed with captions altering the order of executioners and their victims. The history of manipulation is nothing but continuity in the history of crime, on a variety of levels and differently motivated. Later in the series, manipulation is detected and all sides proceed with revealing mutual truths. The struggle for memory morphs into competition to generate an ideologized imitation of memory.

Key Words:

• Memory
• Photographic Manipulation
• Poland
• Ukraine
• World War II