Let this dead photograph remind you of me alive (Bitwa)
Natalia Kepesz
The project Let this dead photograph remind you of me alive deals with the reenactment stagings in Poland. Its focus is on the historical reconstruction of World War II with the reenactment of the most important battles between 1939-1945 on the Polish territories. In this examination of World War II as a Polish national trauma, the structures of Polish war memory are in the foreground. The approach of the project consists of taking analog black-and-white photographs, which will be post-colored in the next step. With this, on the one hand, the desired experience of "bringing back to life" the old black-and-white war photographs gets fulfilled. At the same time, on the basis of the colorization work, patterns of war memory are read. The approach of coloring the reenactment photos thus brings the mediality of photography into focus in order to reveal the complexity of Polish war memory.
The polish photographer Natalia Kepesz (*1983) lives and works in Berlin. After studying cultural studies and art history at the Humboldt University in Berlin, she graduated in 2021 with a degree in photography at the Ostkreuzschule Berlin. Since 2016 she has been working as a freelance photographer. She is a member of bbk Berlin, VG Bild and Women Photograph.
Natalia Kepesz got third place in the World Press Photo Contest 2021 (Portrait Series). She also won the residency prize in the Portraits Hellerau Photography Award 2021, Les Jour Prix at Les Boutographies - recontres photographiques de Montpellier 2021 and was named GUP Fresheyes Talent 2021, among others.
Her works have been exhibited at the Belfast Photo Festival, Helsinki Photo Festival, Festspielhaus Hellerau Dresden, Münzenberg Forum Berlin, Noorderlicht Photo Festival and the World Press Exhibition Foto Tour, among others.