Remembering and re-imagining Eastern Europe’s past, in photographs

A collective exhibition on memory is bringing together the work of photographers from Eastern European, Germany, and Switzerland.

Organised by EEP Berlin & Ostlook (which stands for Eastern European Photography and the former Ostlook magazine), Dealing With Memory spotlights the construction and reconstruction of memory and history in their different forms. Collective and cultural memories are thrown under the spotlight, while political or personal identities are reinterpreted, rearranged, and reflected.

In Fairy Castles of Donetsk, Ukrainian photographers Andrii Dostliev and Lia Dostlieva create a series of collages that combine archive urban photography and images of Lego, recreating the places mentioned by local people who told the artists about their experience of the 1990s.

Danila Tkachenko uses abstract photography to depict Soviet utopian ideas via 3D sci-fi structures, while Russian photographer Valentin Sidorenko, the Polish artist Rafal Milach, and photographer Maxim Dondyuk from Ukraine all use portraiture to capture different identities.

“What characterises many of these artists is that their upbringing has largely been shaped by narratives that have preceded their birth,” co-curator Maya Hristova writes. “What unites them all, is their deep personal connection to the events they are attempting to deconstruct and their imaginative investment in their respective fields of research.” Yet, “the diversity encountered in their standpoints as citizens and artists speaks clearly about the absence of a uniform Eastern European identity,” she adds.

Dealing with Memory is running until 23 August at the Frappant Gallery in Hamburg, Germany.