Reunions
Archival film stills, video projection and sound, 2025
Reunions draws on silent archival footage from 1946 documenting the arrival in New York of displaced people from Europe, including Holocaust survivors, and their reunions with family members. Held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the footage captures fleeting gestures of recognition and embrace – moments in which years of separation, uncertainty and loss give way to the physical presence of another person.
About the Work
Ready extracts individual frames from the moving footage and re-frames them as still photographs, slowing down encounters that would otherwise pass in an instant. Suspended between movement and stillness, these gestures become traces of individual lives within a much larger history of displacement, migration and survival.
The photographs are shown alongside a video projection in which moving water is interrupted by shadowy human figures approaching, meeting and moving apart. Water evokes both physical passage and the movement of memory, connecting the historical moment of arrival with continuing experiences of separation and migration. Accompanied by sound, the installation brings archive and contemporary image into the same space, creating an encounter across different times and histories.
Medium
Eight archival film stills printed on Hahnemühle paper, 40 × 50 cm, framed
2-minute video projection with sound
Selected Exhibitions
Ryedale Photo and Film Festival, Malton, UK, 2026
Life Lines, Wozownia Art Gallery / Vintage Photo Festival, Toruń, Poland, 2025
Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock, UK, 2025
Project PDF
Credits
Archival footage: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum / National Archives & Records Administration
Music: Baby Lullaby, Alexander Blu
This work is part of Life Lines, developed in collaboration with Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock.
Support
Developed with support from Arts Council England through a Developing Your Creative Practice grant.
Other Works in Life Lines
Photography Credits
Installation photography: Mateusz Jagielski / Wozownia Art Gallery, Poland, 2025
Additional installation photography: Ania Ready
Archival film stills: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
