Forum Z: Liewen am Minett revisited

This ForumZ revisits the famous photo book “Liewen am Minett” that documented the Minett region in the late 1980s and sparked a debate about the region’s identity.

The “Liewen am Minett” project came to life by an initiative of the Minister of Culture Robert Krieps in 1986. In the photo book’s foreword he stated that the heart of Luxembourg’s industry, “the cradle of its prosperity and the material support of national independence” – the Minett – has been unfairly overlooked, and its “new type of man” – the Minettsdäpp – largely unseen. “It is therefore a kind of injustice,” Krieps continued, “that we want to redress by doing justice to a world which, over the past ten years, has experienced deep anguish and new transformations. We present a snapshot of a part of our country whose rich facets are unknown.” The photo book, curated by Jean Back, exhibited photos of 16 amateur and professional photographers. “Liewen am Minett” was arguably the first social photography project in the region which was supposed to document the life in the region during the steel crisis, particularly the life and landscapes that would soon no longer be found. A reader’s letter, published in Tageblatt, complained that the photographers had looked only for the ugly sides of the Minett and that the photos did not really represent the Minett and its inhabitants. This sparked a public debate about the identity of the region and its inhabitants. Some 35 years later, researcher Viktoria Boretska has revisited this project and talked to some of the protagonists but also with younger photographers that still document the region in transformation. The film is part of the “Remixing Industrial Pasts in the Digital Age” project of the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History. The research project is funded by Esch2022 European Capital of Culture.