Who decides how memory endures and what role does photography play in shaping collective narratives?
Images have long been a tool for preserving, reclaiming and reinterpreting personal and collective histories. From family albums to colonial archives, photography carries the weight of identity and inheritance, shaping how stories are told, whose voices are heard and what is remembered.
This conversation centres on perspectives that have too often been misrepresented or overlooked, opening up a more nuanced understanding of how memory is constructed and contested through photography.
Writer, educator and curator Max Houghton is joined by Sana Ginwalla, founder of Everyday Lusaka and Zambia Belonging, a counter archive rooted in Lusaka’s studio histories, and Director and contributing photographer to the VII Foundation Ziyah Gafic, whose early life was shaped by the siege of Sarajevo and experiences of displacement. Together, they reflect on photography’s role in holding memory, resisting erasure and reimagining the past through lived experience.
This event is held in collaboration with Laura El-Tantawy of PLATFORM2020, an online hub for documentary photography, rooted in Africa & SWANA and open to the world.
