Light Leaks Organiser Dirk Mevis Discusses Upcoming Photography Festival

The 9th edition of Luxembourg's Light Leaks Festival of photography will take place from Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 May 2025 at Rotondes in Luxembourg-Bonnevoie.

In advance of the festival, Chronicle.lu took the opportunity to discuss its history and the challenges of hosting the event with member of the Luxembourg Streetphoto Collective and event organiser Dirk Mevis.

Chronicle.lu: The festival transitioned from the Luxembourg Street Photography Festival to the Light Leaks Festival in 2023. What were the driving forces behind this rebranding and refocusing of the event and how would you quantify the success of that change?

Dirk Mevis: The Luxembourg Streetphoto Collective has organised the festival at Rotondes since 2016. In 2023, we decided to change the name of the festival. There were several reasons, the main one being that some of our guests told us that they do not consider themselves as "street photographers" in the strictest sense. We liked the idea of broadening our stance by hovering somewhere in this space between documentary and candid [styles] so we could welcome guests as different as Sabine Weiss, Max Pinkers or Nikita Teryoshin. I think the change has been paying off to some extent as the term Light Leaks Festival sets us apart from the other street photography festivals taking place in several cities and we now have a following of guests even from abroad that come every year, which is gratifying.

Chronicle.lu: Please describe the process and the challenges the 21 members of the Luxembourg Streetphoto Collective face when coming together to organise each festival.

Dirk Mevis: The process starts basically during the debrief of the previous festival, when we launch the first ideas about next year's speakers. After eight years, we are quite well organised and things run pretty smoothly. We try every year to improve the experience for visitors and at the same time make the organisation of the event easier on the collective's members. The biggest challenge is probably to get everyone together to distribute tasks. The whole organisation takes time and we all do it on a voluntary basis, so that can at times be challenging. At the same time, this commitment makes it ever more satisfying if the festival turns out great, which we feel it usually does.

Chronicle.lu: At this year's festival, you have Greg Girard, Diana Markosian, Éléonore Simon and Markus Jokela as guest speakers, four street photographers whose style and output are very different from one another. How difficult is it to continually find variety in the choice of people to invite and participate in the festival?

Dirk Mevis: This is actually the pleasurable part of organising the festival. Each one of us has different "dream" speakers so we have heated discussions. We try to keep the line-up diverse in all dimensions: one guest more pure street photography, one more in the documentary realm, etc. Then the only remaining problem is logistical. We see if the photographers on our list have time, whether they want to come to Luxembourg and so on.

Chronicle.lu: Luxembourg, as a city, is considerably smaller than the more famous street photography havens of London, New York and Tokyo. What is it that you feel drives the ongoing passion for street photography here?

Dirk Mevis: This is true of course. At the same time, a number of factors have fostered an interest in street photography, particularly in Luxembourg. Luxembourg has developed greatly over the past decade and the audience here has become more international with many different backgrounds - people know what street photography is. Photography itself has become very accessible, just as the means to share your work. Street photography is very "grass roots" in that sense. It's a community thing and so I think it helps connect people. We experience this in the feedback we receive from our visitors. That's also why we organise our open wall exhibit where everyone can hang their print and win a prize.

Chronicle.lu: In this age of image saturation and a camera in everyone's pockets, what do you feel preserves the importance of the discipline of street photography?

Dirk Mevis: Well, I would say that quality still shows. Even if you are inundated on a daily basis with pictures everywhere, you will still be surprised and amazed by great photographs. It obviously becomes more difficult to find the truly great work and maybe algorithms aren't the best at finding it for you. But that's also in part why we do the festival, to discuss work that amazes us with our visitors, friends and other photographers.

Chronicle.lu: What do you feel the Light Leaks Festival 2025 will deliver which previous iterations have not?

Dirk Mevis: We actually have quite a few changes planned for 2025. Due to construction works at Rotondes, we have been forced to rethink the festival. The theme of this year's festival is the Gare quarter. The conferences will still be at the usual location but our inside exhibit had to be cancelled and will be replaced by a large outdoor exhibit in the courtyard of Rotondes. We also have a collaboration with the Photothèque of the City of Luxembourg, which showcases historical photographs of the Gare quarter in the walkway that crosses over the tracks at the station (passerelle, CFL). We also have an exhibit on the Place de Strasbourg of pictures taken by inhabitants on disposable cameras. 

More information on the Light Leaks Festival can be found at: www.lightleaks.lu

SM