Robert Lebeck: 1968

“The year of the student protests took place without me.”In his autobiography, the German photojournalist and collector Robert Lebeck (1929 – 2014) described how he experienced the year 1968. A closer examination of the contact sheets, prints and reportages made by Robert Lebeck during this epoch-making year on behalf of “Stern,” one of Germany’s highest-circulation magazines at that time, reveal the extent to which his incisive photographs, despite his own assessment, truly reflect the changes in society that were going on at that time. Upheaval, protest, perseverance and failure: In “Robert Lebeck. 1968”, the leitmotifs of that year that are not always visible in the mythicizing retrospective view are made tangible in exemplary photographic series taken in places like New York, Bogotá, Kassel, Belfast or Wolfsburg. Many of the exhibited photos have never been published and are completely unknown.