LET THIS DEAD PHOTOGRAPH REMINDS YOU OF ME ALIVE

My project titled „LET THIS DEAD PHOTOGRAPH REMINDS YOU OF ME ALIVE“ represents the examination of the Polish national trauma of World War II, where I am interested in the structures of Polish war memory. The inspiration for this work is the story of my grandmother, who ran away from home at the age of 17 to fight in World War II. She sent her mother a photograph from the front in 1945. On the back it was written: „let this dead photograph reminds you of me alive“.

The project deals with the stages of Polish war memory, especially with the reenactment of World War II in Poland. Moreover, this postcolonial attempt of overcoming the trauma of war through “historical mimicry”-strategies is extended by another, artistic component. The project‘s procedure consists first of all in taking analog black and white photographs. Both, the portraits of the participants and the game scenarios of the reenactment, are of importance to me. In the next step, the photographs are post-colored. On the one hand, this fulfills the experience longed for by the many reenactment participants of „bringing to life“ the old black-and-white war photographs. At the same time, on the basis of the colorization work, patterns of war memory are exposed. The approach of coloring the reenactment photos thus brings the mediality of photography into focus.