1968 through Robert Lebeck's iconic photos

The curators had their work cut out for them, carefully combing through many hundreds of photos in the archives of Robert Lebeck (1929 – 2014), one of Germany's most distinguished photo journalists and chronicler of events big and small since the 1950s.

The Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg art museum and the Wolfsburg Institute for Contemporary History joined forces for this exhibition, supported by Lebeck's widow Cordula, who manages her husband's comprehensive archives. For the show, 110 negatives were reproduced on high quality paper as fine art prints, almost all of them in black-and-white.

Many of the photos Lebeck shot in 1968 for the weekly Stern — one of Germany's highest-circulation magazines at that time — have since become a part of people's collective memory.

For some of Robert Lebeck's best works in 1968, click on the picture gallery above.