Remembering displacement: Photography and the interactive spaces of memory

This article draws upon research into the practices within and later memories of Displaced Persons camps in Germany. These camps, set up immediately after the close of the Second World War, stayed open much longer than had first been anticipated, some remaining in operation well into the late 1950s and early 1960s. During this period, specific notions and practices of nation and culture became established, and the camps came to serve as complex sites of identity, belonging and also of difference. Through investigation of the oral and visual narratives of former Displaced Persons, this article examines the initial construction and later (re)viewing of old photographs as well as the reframings involved in the taking of new photographs, and assesses their role in the imagined and physical spaces of embodied memory, place and the shifting sites of belonging and identity.