"Eyes wide open" 100 years of Leica photography exhibition opening in the Municipal Gallery

The exhibition "Eyes wide open" 100 years of Leica photography, opened Wednesday, November 30, at 7 pm, in the Municipal Gallery. Organized by Porto City Hall and curated by Hans-Michael Koetzle, the exhibition will be open to the public until February 5. This event is free.

The starting point to hold an exhibition that showed Leica in the world and in Portugal was a rather informal one. It was the result of a conversation between Rui Moreira, mayor of Porto and Andreas Kaufmann, owner of Leica. The challenge to preparing the exhibition was set. The purpose being to show diverse audiences Leica's camera specific visual language.

In other words, the intermediality, i.e., exploring relationships in arts, finds its expression in the genius of the photographic impressions of all those who, with a Leica camera, dare to capture that "decisive moment", as mentioned by Kaufmann.

One of the examples of the so called visual historian photographer is Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose work can be viewed at the exhibition.

With this launch, Porto, by nature a creative city, offers an innovative and international quality photo exhibition that comprises historical images common to all of us and that Leica has been capturing since 1914, when Oskar Barnack, the first Leica engineer, dared to create.