Bridge the Gap: Multidirectional memory in photography projects for refugee youths

This article focuses on photo projects organised for teenage refugees by the Society for Humanistic Photography (Berlin, Germany). These projects, named Bridge the Gap I (2015), and Bridge the Gap II (2016), were carried out in Berlin and brought together teenagers with refugee and German-majority backgrounds to experiment with digital photography and create joint exhibitions. Drawing on concepts from memory studies, such as travelling memory and multidirectional memory, the author examines the projects as interventions in German and Berlin memory cultures, and examines how multidirectional memory was produced – and sometimes not produced - within the projects. The importance of memory work in the context of refugee resettlement is often overlooked, but is particularly relevant when cultural encounters are organised in museums and exhibition galleries.