WestLicht is a privately run museum in Vienna-Neubau, the city’s creative district, and is one of the premier addresses for photography in Vienna. Founded in 2001, WestLicht is housed in a loft-like courtyard of a former glass factory on Westbahnstraße and hosts around six temporary exhibitions per year that provide a broad overview of the medium of photography. It is also a camera museum, housing hundreds of historically and technically significant devices, including the world’s first commercially produced camera – the Susse Frères Daguerréotype (1839).There are also numerous other exhibits, such as underwater, toy, umbrella-handle, and carrier pigeon cameras, KGB spy cameras hidden in cigarette boxes, and one of the 30 modified Hasselblad cameras taken into space during the Apollo moon mission. 

The annual highlight is the “World Press Photo” exhibition, an international series that spotlights the best in international press photography. WestLicht presents the winning photographs of this renowned competition every autumn.

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The OstLicht gallery was opened in June 2012 as an addition to the new cultural site in the former Ankerbrot factory in Vienna’s Favoriten district. Temporary group and solo exhibitions of contemporary photographic art are displayed in amongst 400 m² of historic industrial architecture, featuring both Austrian and international artists.

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