Fading Stories

The exhibition “Fading Stories – pass them on” at Fotografiska in Stockholm portrayed 23 survivors of the Holocaust. While the presentation in the physical space was reduced to typographic posters in black and white, photographs and other background information including interviews were accessible via an AR app. Based on quotes from the survivors, the aesthetics of the poster framework were inspired by censured documents with blacked out passages, in order to illustrate how easily stories can be fragmented and corrupted. This demanded the viewers’ attention and thus urged the importance of seeing the full story, to see through “alternative facts”. Technically, the typographical set-up of the posters worked as a QR code that invited visitors to use their phone camera to unlock each portrait and, once unlocked, to be able to access the full story, the survivor’s voice and portrait at any time. The typeface on the posters had a strong visual connection to the Hebrew alphabet and thus created an additional bond between history and present.