Hierzulande (In this Country)

“I’ve traveled a lot in my photography life, but to capture an exciting photo, all I really needed to do was step outside the front door, and I did that a lot.”

Berlin-born Robert Lebeck (1929–2014) is one of the great German photojournalists. Hierzulande (In this Country) brings together a selection of his reportages from Germany from 1955 to 1983.

The synopsis is a photographic gem: the rebellion of a young generation in postwar Germany; East Berliners shopping on Karl-Marx-Strasse in Neukölln before the Wall was built; Kampen on the island of Sylt, which in the 1950s developed from a fishing village into a stomping ground for the rich and beautiful; the release of the last German prisoners of war in 1955 at the Herleshausen border station; impressions of political life in the Bonn Republic; personal portraits of celebrities such as Maria Callas, Alfred Hitchcock, Romy Schneider and Elvis Presley.

With his charismatic gift for quiet observation, Robert Lebeck got close to people. He photographed when people kissed, drank and danced, but also when they cried and suffered. His photographs document the small and large scenes of everyday life, capturing a piece of West German contemporary history. Anchored in our cultural memory, his photographs from full life have lost none of their topicality.

Curated for f³ – freiraum für fotografie by Miriam Zlobinski.

Accompanying the exhibition is the photo book Robert Lebeck. Hierzulande by Steidl Verlag. It is available at f³ – freiraum für fotografie. Edited and designed by Cordula Lebeck, with an essay by Daniela Sannwald. 2023, 192 pages, 170 photographs, hardcover 20 x 28,5 cm, 35 €.

All accompanying events can be found here.

Image: Romy Schneider during the shooting of the film “Gruppenbild mit Dame”, Berlin 1976 © Robert Lebeck

The exhibition was made available by Kunstarchiv Lüneburg and Archiv Robert Lebeck.