The exhibition Memento. Photography, Interrupted celebrates Huis Marseille’s 25th birthday. Over the last quarter century the museum has acquired a collection of more than eight hundred contemporary photographic works, from which hundred highlights are on show in Memento. They include work by many internationally leading photographers, such as David Goldblatt, Deana Lawson, Zanele Muholi, Joanna Piotrowska, Viviane Sassen, Andres Serrano and Thomas Struth, alongside important new names like Farah Al Qasimi, Widline Cadet and Tyler Mitchell.
Every photograph is itself a memento; that is to say, it is bound to a particular moment in time. But the works in the collection can also be seen as mementos in the history of the museum itself. Each piece once formed part of an exhibition, and also often reflects a specific development in society and art.
The subtitle Photography, Interrupted refers to the different stories told by the collection history of the museum. Certain collection lines are ongoing, such as Dutch and South African photography, while others have been interrupted by new stories, such as those of a diaspora.
For Memento the art depot and the exhibition space have been uniquely linked, with the gallery presentation echoing the language of the depot. Especially for Memento, the exhibition designer and artist Philip Lüschen made a video work inspired by the life of the collection pieces in the depot.
Memento is accompanied by seven ‘zines’, designed by Sandra Kassenaar, with specially-written texts by Panashe Chigumadzi (on South African photography), Pieter Hoexum (on the philosophical experience of ‘homecoming’), Désirée Kroep (on the border between life and death), Lou Stoppard (on the overlap between art and fashion photography), and Gijsbert van der Wal (on Emmy Eerdmans in the work of Hanne van der Woude).