"Images, Power and Conflicts of Interpretation in Europe between 1945, 1990 and 2025"
The East-West European Memorial Meeting in Krzyżowa 2025 focuses on historical image memory in relation to the historical turning points of "80 years since the end of WWII" and "35 years since the collapse of the communist states".
The conference will focus on how the use and reception of photographs and images have shaped the memory of historical events in Eastern and Western Europe. How have they been used in memorials, museums, documentation centers and exhibitions before and after 1990? How are they used today? The aim is to take stock: How does the historical memory of images interact with these turning points today? What changed with the historical breaks in the use of images and the narratives that developed around the themes of "mass crimes," "camps," "occupation regimes," and "gestures of reconciliation? How has the treatment of images changed since the "visual turn" in the 2000s, and how has digital transformation, including the use of AI, affected the use of photographs and images today?