Several dimensions of ethnic affiliation and identity

In November 2008 a photography exhibition was on its way with the purpose to present along with accompanying activities the multilevel-and changeable meaning of ethnical identity as well as the heterogeneousness of relationships among cultures in several dimensions. The exhibition that presents archive photographs taken from 1916 until 1920 and makes the basis of the topic that thanks to the exhibition organizers and visitors created a new, continuously growing, virtual collection aiming at thematic exhibition being so much different in the way it is presented: recent photographs could be viewed by the means of projections and are to be accessed on the Internet. Since summer 2009 the third dimension has been added: when under the title «now I am descending from the horizon» a selection of recent photographs and interviews with inhabitants of different nationalities and common neighbouring area of Croatia, Hungary and Serbia was presented. Roads and small villages in Baranya, Slavonia and Voivodina are regularly not included in bigger maps, just as the fact that on the mental map of Europe we very frequently cannot find the places in which despite wartime devastation co-existence can be found where every individual can be tied to different cultures. This welfare is illustrated by the interviews done in 2008 with German, Hungarian, Croatian and Serbian population. Exhibitions as shown in the catalogue research the role of ethnic affiliation and inherited and acquired culture in creating personal identity as well as in mutual relations. It is a complex, heavy to digest and so much live issue thus we cannot expect ready answers and certain recipes. What is more important here is to question, meet new communities, new relations and emotions