2025 marks the celebration of the Leica centenary under the motto ‘100 Years of Leica I: Witness to a Century’. In 1925, Leica marketed the first compact camera in history, which used 35 mm film, the Leica I. It would definitively change photographic practices and open up new artistic avenues for photographers. Street photography, popularized by the small Leica camera, ‘mobile in the flow of action’, is one of the photographic trends that has lasted for over a century.

The curators of the ‘Street Magic’ exhibition, Karin Rehn-Kaufmann and Inas Fayed, have brought together works from the Leica archives for the first time. The Belle Etoile gallery in Arles will present an extract from this exhibition with big names such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, René Burri, Elliott Erwitt, Jane Evelyn Atwood and William Klein, as well as Martine Franck, Joel Meyerowitz and Gianni Berengo Gardin, to name but a few.

The exhibition brings together black and white and color works which explore the diversity of artistic perspectives in the 20th century through their dense, geometric, spectacular, or minimalist composition. 

Exhibition from 7 to 12 July 2025
Opening on 7 July at 6.30 pm

Galerie La Belle Etoile
7 rue des Pénitents Bleus
13200 Arles