Beyond black and white: Tracing coulours of postwar exhibitions

Shortly before the opening of our exhibition “On Displaying Violence: First Exhibitions on the Nazi Occupation in Europe, 1945-1948” at the Deutsches Historisches Museum, a friend of mine told me she would not visit. The reason was not the subject – postwar exhibitions about the German occupation of Europe – but the fact that the show included black-and-white photographs and films. “They always put me in a depressive mood”, she said, “no matter what they show”. For her, black-and-white imagery is more than just a visual style. It instantly evokes the Second World War and the Holocaust because that is how she first encountered those events at school: through black-and-white photographs. Her reaction might seem surprising at first, but it points to something deeper – the emotional power of visual codes in shaping how we remember the past.