About the exhibition

More than 10,000 historical photographs have been collected by the Buchenwald Memorial over the past 40 years. Starting in 2004, the photos were analysed, inventoried and digitized in a project funded by the German Research Foundation. These photos formed the basis of the digital photo exhibition launched online in 2010 entitled ‘In Black and White – Photographs of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp’, which aimed to present the first pictorial history of Buchenwald from the creation of the camp in July 1937 to its liberation in April 1945.

The content and design of the exhibition have now been thoroughly overhauled, and ‘In Black and White’ is being presented in a new form. The photos are grouped together into the four main subjects relevant to Buchenwald: the camp and its buildings, the prisoners, the SS and the bystanders. Viewers can now engage with the photos based on the context in which they were taken. Additionally, series of photos have been reconstructed to reveal the ‘lens’ through which we view the Buchenwald concentration camp when we look at the photos. Never before has Buchenwald been depicted with so much nuance, detail and texture.