WHAT STANDS BETWEEN US
In response to current ongoing global conflicts, a kind of “exhaustion of change” (Steffen Mau) has been diagnosed, and not in German society alone. Yet in contradiction to this, we allow ourselves, more than ever before, to be drawn in emotionally and polarized by the images and texts accompanying these events and crises. Nationalist tendencies, conspiracy theories, disillusion with the state, right-wing violence, stricter asylum policies, and the increasing fortification of Europe’s external borders, etc. represent only one cross-section of dangerous political currents quite apart from authoritarian regimes and ongoing wars. These are evidence that democracies are in danger and that their foundations, even in Europe, are more fragile than we previously thought and need to be reinforced again and again.
People want to use their own voices – and images – to counter the growing social divide. But what, actually, can we still learn and say with images, especially photographic ones? And isn’t it the camera that stands between us? It records incessantly and reinforces the respective certainties on countless platforms and in their bubbles. Photographic images deepen divides, express dissent, and often become a medium of polarization themselves.
With its leitmotif what stands between us, EMOP Berlin 2025 invited museums, exhibition spaces, municipal and private galleries, project spaces, and (art) universities to submit exhibition projects as contributions to the festival month that present photography (once again) as a project capable of describing social reality. what stands between us offers space to observations, experiences, expectations, hopes, and fears over various conflicts; it seeks to use photographic images to present dialogue as a means of countering the ongoing mechanisms of polarization.