Supported projects

D’Millen asbl

Isabelle Bernard-Lesceux, historian and coordinator at the D’Millen asbl, tells a present and past analysis of the eight villages of the municipality of Beckerich, carried out in collaboration with photographer Philippe Malaise.

Portrait of Isabelle Bernard-Lesceux and Philippe Malaise, in front of their photo exhibition

©Lynn Theisen

Isabelle Bernard-Lesceux and Philippe Malaise

  • Focus area Remembrance & Heritage
  • Period 2022

The Project

The starting point was a photographic work illustrating the village of Beckerich, organized for the 10th anniversary of Millegalerie (the art gallery attached to the D’Millen asbl). This led to an exhibition in which Philippe Malaise, the photographer of this project, participated using the technique of rephotography. To do this, he asked me for help in providing old photos and postcards, as rephotography involves photographing the same location at different times. The first results (around thirty collages) generated so many positive reactions from other photographers and exhibition visitors that Philippe suggested we build a much more ambitious project: to carry out rephotographs for all eight villages of the municipality of Beckerich.

For me, as a historian, it was essential to collect the old photos and postcards before these documents disappeared forever, taking with them a whole piece of local memory. There was also a certain urgency in identifying the places, naming the people, and remembering Luxembourgish traditions while there were still witnesses who could talk about them and while certain buildings were still identifiable. I therefore enthusiastically accepted Philippe's proposal.

In total, Philippe would produce more than 230 rephotographs of the eight villages in the municipality. But he didn’t want to stop there. Soon, he had the idea to complement the exhibition of his rephotographs at the Elvange Multipurpose Center with the publication of a beautiful book featuring his rephotographs, four brochures sorted by village, old-fashioned postcards, and the installation of 15 permanent panels placed “in situ” in various villages of the municipality. It was impossible for me not to agree to all these unprecedented and original proposals in my adopted municipality. Thus, a very positive collaboration was born between two passionate individuals. After securing the necessary funding, we were able to launch this monumental project.

Photo of the exhibition "Haut a Gëschter – Gëschter an haut: d’Dierfer vu Biekerech". Panels with photos of the village of Beckerich are visible.

©Lynn Theisen

The exhibition "Haut a Gëschter – Gëschter an haut: d’Dierfer vu Biekerech"

Execution

The exhibition's opening took place on May 12, and during this event, all related productions (presentation of 124 rephotographs, books, brochures, postcards, and outdoor panels) were showcased.

My first task was to collect as many old photos as possible. This was not always easy because we had to contact the residents, explain the project to them, convince them to lend us their photos so we could digitize them—basically, establish a trust relationship. Fortunately, I have lived in the municipality of Beckerich for nearly forty years and have worked for the D’Millen asbl since 2007. The residents know me and trusted me. In total, more than 1,000 photos were collected. Most of them were re-contextualized in the current landscape, and many people were identified with the help of some villagers, allowing me to write the captions for all the published rephotographs.

The second step of my work was the long and tedious digitization of these old documents, now stored in the brand-new municipal media library.

As the project progressed, I also became the driving force behind contacts with the Oeuvre first, then with the Municipality and its various services, and with all the businesses that participated in our project. Not to mention the very active collaboration with Francis Filbig, who translated all our publications into Luxembourgish.

Philippe Malaise's work was no less intense. The first phase of his work was to visit the sites to find the exact spots and take a photograph from the same location and angle as the photographer of the past. This was quite a difficult task, as the roads are much busier today, there’s a lot more urban furniture, trees, hedges, private properties, new buildings… Many times, Philippe had to adapt and sometimes even give up on taking a photo.

The village is a world

 

Portrait de Philippe Malaise, devant son exposition photos avec un appareil photo à la main
Philippe Malaise photographer

Back home, the work continued on his computer, where he painstakingly combined the old view with the new one to create the desired montage. In total, this involved countless hours of meticulous work.

At the same time, Philippe also designed and laid out the book, brochures, and postcards and created the wonderful scenography for the exhibition. An incredible amount of work.

Our initiative was initially received with some hesitance from the residents when they first heard about the project. But when they discovered the montages, their enthusiasm exploded. Word of mouth worked so well in the municipality that it drew over 500 people during the exhibition. And today, thanks to this project, I’m being contacted again to receive more old photos. But as Philippe says, “There was also a lot of emotion in the encounters on the ground with people who gave me information. Like this elderly man who said, ‘That’s my father, ’ showing me a photo from the 1930s of a young boy no more than ten years old. What a shock, these times colliding.”

Goal

Philippe Malaise wonderfully defined the goal of our project. I’ll leave him the floor: “We want to convey the message that these women and men of the past, these buildings, even if destroyed, even if transformed, these traditions… Everything is still here in our present, even if it’s just in the background. Too often, we think we start from nothing, but the rephotographs show that this is not the case. We build only on what has already been built, we live only what has already been lived.”

After all, don’t we do the same things as before? We build houses and live in them, we move around, work, relax, and entertain ourselves, we celebrate holidays, our children play and go to school… Only the ways have changed.
We will probably do the same things later, but differently, if the climatic and economic indicators we see on the horizon reveal their predictions.

A collage of old and new photos of the village of Beckerich

@D'Millen asbl

One of the photos from "Haut a Gëschter – Gëschter an haut: d’Dierfer vu Biekerech"

The collected old photographs form an important collective memory. They can lead to a respect for the old heritage. With this project, we hope to raise awareness among the population that old documents should not be thrown away or burned. They are witnesses to a bygone era, but they are still part of the roots of our society.

This work, through the universal emotion it generates, can contribute to a better sense of belonging and make people feel closer to each other. With the current population movements in Luxembourg, with new Luxembourgish or foreign arrivals in the villages, this sense of belonging is often put to the test. The same is true for the huge gap technology has created between generations. With this initiative, we hope to foster intergenerational relations as well as relationships between long-term residents and newcomers.

On my side, I plan to continue collecting and digitizing old photos to feed the municipal media library and promote close collaboration with the National Library.