Leit an der Stad

The exhibition showcases approximately 200 photographs featuring snapshots from everyday life in the public arena in Luxembourg City, from the 1950s to the present day. The common thread throughout all the images is that they are considered examples of ‘street photography’, which involves spontaneously capturing a given situation. Shots of random passers-by or groups of people become historical documents against the backdrop of the city, yet the atmosphere they exude and their composition also transcend their historical context.

The pictorial theme of the hustle and bustle on the streets of (big) cities is almost as old as photography itself, and yet the breakthrough in street photography did not occur until the advent of the compact camera, with the Leica launch in 1925.

The themes of the exhibition encompass those that have always been held dear by photographers and that characterise urban life to this day: the flâneur (a close relative of the street photographer), shops and display windows, the workplace, traffic and transport, leisure activities as well as festivals and traditions.

The photographs on display hail from the collections of the Luxembourg City Photographic Library, the collections of the Lëtzebuerg City Museum as well as private collections. Pol Aschman, Batty Fischer, Tony Krier, Édouard Kutter, Théo Mey, Marcel Schroeder and Marcel Tockert represent the “classics” of Luxembourg photography and photojournalism from the 1950s to the 1970s. Alongside more recent works from the 1990s and 2000s, six image series by current photography artists, among them the collective Street Photography Luxembourg, are also on display.

Much like the flâneur, visitors roam seven decades of images on a visual journey of the urban space, a space that is constantly changing, much like its inhabitants.