MEMENTO

From the Estate of Henning Langenheim

Henning Langenheim

With the exhibition MEMENTO, the AFF Gallery presents the legacy of the photographer Henning Langenheim, who died at a young age (1950-2004). The show focuses on the work series Memorials I and II and Mordfelder (Murder Fields), products of Henning Langenheim’s intensive investigation of the Nazi regime’s systematic mass extermination.

The point of departure for MEMENTO is a series of images from the Buchenwald concentration camp. In Langenheim’s work, memory is a key concept that operates on several levels. The focus here is on personal memory as well as on social engagement with memorialization of the past, changes in the culture of remembrance, and the visual aspect of the representation of memories.

Today, Langenheim’s pictures are themselves memorial documents from the past: not only an impressive photographic visualization of how the memory of the Nazi mass murder has been dealt with, but also an illustration of the important role that photographic archives play in a society’s memory work.