Jan Elantkowski

Gerda Henkel Research Fellow (02/2026 – 07/2026)

The Circulation of Original Holocaust Photography and Photography as a Tool in Addressing Holocaust Trauma in the Works of Central-Eastern European Artists Over the Decades

This project examines the circulation of original Holocaust photography and its use as a tool for addressing Holocaust trauma in the works of Central-Eastern European artists. While engagement with such images is a global issue, the focus here is on how artists from the region have integrated historical photographs and developed new strategies to confront Holocaust trauma. Building on case studies of Boris Lurie, a Jewish artist from Eastern Europe who settled in the United States after the war, it explores his 1950s–60s works combining Holocaust photographs with post-war American consumer culture.

It also considers earlier examples, such as Władysław Strzemiński’s 1945 collage series To My Friends, the Jews, which merges personal war experience with Holocaust imagery. Expanding to later decades, such as the 1980s and beyond, it examines Péter Forgács’s use of original film footage to construct layered narratives of memory, and works by Elżbieta Janicka, Attila Szűcs, and Marcell Esterházy, whose art continues to engage with Holocaust trauma and its enduring impact.

Jan Elantkowski is an art historian and curator based in Budapest. He holds a PhD from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and a master’s degree in art history from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He has published on contemporary art from Central-Eastern Europe and artistic representations of trauma and on the Holocaust. Between 2015 and 2018, he was a teaching and research associate at the Chair of East European Art History at Humboldt University of Berlin. Since 2018 he has worked as a curator and art historian in Ludwig Múzeum – Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest.

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