MementoPhotography, interrupted

Memento brought together more than one hundred contemporary photographic works from the Huis Marseille collection in celebration of the museum’s 25th anniversary. Featuring artists including Farah Al Qasimi, Deana Lawson, Dana Lixenberg, Tyler Mitchell, Zanele Muholi, Dawit L. Petros, and Viviane Sassen, the exhibition explored how the museum’s collection has reflected changes in photography, visual culture, and society over the past quarter century. Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Keizersgracht 401, 1016 EK Amsterdam, The Netherlands. June 28, 2025 — Runs through October 12, 2025. Rather than presenting a straightforward chronology, the exhibition staged the collection in a monumental and unconventional way. Works were displayed in arrangements inspired by storage racks and depot systems, collapsing the distinction between archive and gallery. Lina Bo Bardi glass easels borrowed from the Depot of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen further emphasized the photographs as objects in space. The exhibition also framed each photograph as a kind of memento: a record of a particular moment in time and a marker within the museum’s own institutional history. A live-animation film by exhibition designer Philip Lüschen and a series of zines created for seven galleries extended the exhibition’s interest in memory, display, and the evolving life of the collection.