DUDELANGE.- In 2025, the Centre national de l’audiovisuel proudly presents an inaugural look at the Teutloff Collection. The exhibition "Facets of Humanity: Works from the Teutloff Collection", on display from 17 May to 21 September 2025 at DISPLAY01 in Dudelange, marks the first public unveiling in Luxembourg of art collector Lutz Teutloff’s holdings since their acquisition by the CNA in 2017.
Lutz Teutloff, born in Berlin in 1938, began an apprenticeship as a textile merchant after boarding school, established his own label in the fashion industry and led his company to success. In 1989, Teutloff finally sold his thriving fashion label to start a new life as a gallery owner in contemporary art. His fascination with art stems from a desire to break away from the fast pace of the fashion business and devote himself to a higher, non-commercial goal. His long-standing engagement with fashion can also be interpreted as the foundation for his interest in humanistic photography: Fashion also deals with people, their desires, their social status, their affiliation to a particular mindset and their personality. The foundation for the collection was laid between 1998 and 2007 through exhibition projects with artists and collaborations with museums. From the turn of the millennium onwards, the collection was systematically expanded with a clear focus on the medium of photography.
The collector Teutloff became increasingly interested in people in photography, their physicality, but also their social circumstances and political structures. He was fascinated by the medium's ability to depict human existence in all its facets. It reflects living conditions and relationship systems in real time. An antiquarian exhibition catalogue of The Family of Man ultimately inspired the idea of picking up where Edward Steichen left off in 1955. In its thematic orientation, the collection is intended as a tribute to Steichen's legendary exhibition The Family of Man, which is curated by the CNA at Clervaux Castle and has been part of the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage since 2003. An important step in building the collection was the definition of its own thematic areas under the umbrella term of contemporary photography, following Steichen's dramaturgical arrangement of his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
The Teutloff Collection includes notable works by internationally renowned artists of the last 50 years. The artists in the collection include Antoine d’Agata, Aziz+Cucher, Roger Ballen, Nina Berman, Valie Export, Thomas Florschütz, Jim Goldberg, Paul Graham, Pieter Hugo, Jürgen Klauke, Herlinde Koelbl, Susan Meiselas, Zanele Muholi, Michael Najjar, Gundula Schulze Eldowy, Andres Serrano, Miroslav Tichy, etc. In 2017, a selection of 471 works of art, mainly photographs, by 195 artists was put in the care of the Centre national de l’audiovisuel.
To mark the 70th anniversary of The Family of Man, the CNA is now presenting Facets of Humanity. Works from the Teutloff Collection, a selection of works from the collection that illuminate Steichen's universal themes from a contemporary perspective. For this exhibition, a selection of 82 works from the Teutloff Collection has been made, reflecting its core concept of depicting the human condition – the entire spectrum of human existence, from birth to death and beyond.
While the photographs continue the humanistic tradition of the Steichen Collection in terms of content, they also offer a new reflection on themes such as family, childhood and social identity, highlighting the changing traditional expectations of modern society. The new presentation opens a dialogue between Steichen's historical collection and the contemporary Teutloff Collection, both of which are part of the CNA's archive collection, and enables a comparison between past and present.
