Credit: Ali Sahib, Chronicle.lu
On Thursday 15 May 2025, the ninth edition of Luxembourg's Light Leaks Festival of photography opened at Rotondes in Luxembourg-Bonnevoie.
The festival, which runs from Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 May 2025, features a variety of displays of images taken by local photographers and will host a number of workshops involving a variety of guest photographers.
The festival opened with a speech by member of the Luxembourg Street Photo Collective, Dirk Mevis, who welcomed attendees to the event and thanked the event’s sponsors as well as those involved in running the festival. He also detailed the various activities taking place across the weekend as well as detailing the changes made to this edition of the festival, in comparison to previous years.
The changes, enforced by renovation work taking place in the southern rotondes, see the displays of photographs normally installed indoors spread out across the communal square of the Rotondes complex and installed in the Klub venue of the northern rotondes. The externally displayed photos are separated into two distinct installations and feature works from a variety of Luxembourgish and Luxembourg-based photographers on the subject of the Gare area of Luxembourg City.
The main group of photo displays consists of images taken by members of the Luxembourg Streetphoto Collective, the winner of the Luxembourg Streetphoto Collective 2024 Slidenight and students from the Lycée Aline Mayrisch and Lycée des Arts et Métiers. The second group consists of images taken by secondary school students who participated in a recent contest exploring street photography through the theme of the "Quartier de la Gare."
The Rotondes’ Klub venue features a video and photographic installation from Luxembourg photographers Liz Lambert and Dirk Mevis, entitled "The Rock in the River”. It explores various aspects of life in the Luxembourg-Gare district. Throughout the festival, the Klub venue is also hosting the “Open Wall” competition, where photographers can add up to three of their own images to a gallery in the venue. The Luxembourg Streetphoto Collective will select a winning image from those submitted at the end of the festival.
Outside the Klub venue, organisers installed a marquee for the opening of the event, which hosted a small market where photographers could sell their work, photography-related books were for sale and members of the Streetphoto Collective were on-hand to meet and chat with attendees. The organisers offered free beer, wine and tacos to attendees, with DJs providing a soundtrack for the event.
Two additional photo installations have been also set up at Place de Strasbourg (Luxembourg-Gare) and on the Passarelle de la Gare. The installation on Place de Strasbourg features images captured on single-use film cameras which were given to individuals living and working in the Gare neighbourhood. The Passerelle de la Gare installation features archive images supplied by the Photothèque du Luxembourg which showcase the evolution of the neighbourhood and its role in the city’s history.
The full itinerary for the festival can be found at: https://www.lightleaks.lu
