The photographic series Bühnenbilder explores private photographs that were taken during World War II by Jewish individuals or families who went into hiding, often as tourists abroad. Through false documents, they were buying themselves an apparent safety, a temporary mise-en-scène (‘bühnenbild’) on which they needed to act. When applied to the cinema, mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement – composition, sets, props, actors, costumes and lighting. Defined as a “placing on stage” and a physical behaviour of the actors on a stage, the photographs that are emerging in these specific dramatic conditions are just that – staged realities. These photographs were often made as snapshots or holiday photos, landscape or cityscape shots, but only when we find out the context of the image, the contrast between the actual truth and the played out truth increases. Bühnenbilder is an ongoing research project conducted in the archives of the Jewish Historical Museum, Belgrade, Serbia; USHMM, Washington (D.C.), USA.