page_title: Photothèque (Luxembourg)
section_title: Collections
hierarchical_section_title: Photothèque (Luxembourg) / Collections
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of the Funck-Duchamp brewery in Clausen, Luxembourg City.
context_page_description: The Photothèque in Luxembourg City in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg houses several large collections of photographs of the city taken between 1855 and today. Open to the public, it is modelled on the photothèque at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and has adopted the same classification system.
context_section_description: The holdings comprise some four million photographs taken between 1855 and the present day.  They have been built up over the years through donations and bequests as well as by works specifically funded by the city. Most of the archives are on the ground floor while the first floor is occupied by the city's binding service as well as by the remaining archives.
  Among the most important collections are those of Batty Fischer (some 10,000 documents showing the look of the city between 1890 and 1958); Théo Mey (some 400,000 photographs of the Grand Duchy in the 1950s and 1960s); the archives of Edouard Kutter and his son of the same name (comprising some 200,000 photographs of the Grand Ducal family and of news items from 1950 to 1980); Tony Krier (400,000 images of Luxembourg City, the Grand Duchy and events from 1939 to 1967); as well as a collection of some 500,000 negatives from Camille and Pol Aschman covering news items from 1935 to 1988.
  In 1992, Remo Raffaelli — who had worked together with Jacques Bohler, a photographer with Républicain Lorrain and Tageblatt — donated 40,000 negatives related to newspaper articles on sport and culture between 1976 and 1988. In 1994, Pierre Bertogne enriched the holdings with a further 16,000 images taken during the 1930s and 1940s which include photographs of Luxembourg's occupation during the Second World War and its subsequent liberation.
  Martine Theisen, who has been at the Photothèque since 1989 and has held the post of director since 1998, explains that most people come to see the older pictures which remind them of the city as it was when they were children. Efforts are still being made to build up the collection in order to ensure wider coverage of the city and its history. Among the ten people working at the Photothèque, there is also a photographer who is regularly assigned to keep abreast of  changes in the city's development. In relation to digitization, Ms Theisen explains that it has not yet been possible to find a firm capable of handling such a large assignment under suitable conditions. Efforts will however continue in this direction in the future.
caption: Pierre Brandebourg: The brewery in Clausen, Luxembourg (1865). One of the Photothèque's oldest photographs
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