Smile, please! Photo: Margit and Much Heiss

Over 25,000 negatives from the company archive of Foto Margit – whose portrait studio on Leopoldstraße operated until the 1970s – are preserved at the Innsbruck City Archives/City Museum. A colourful collection of images, mostly in black and white, showcases the work of Margarethe ‘Margit’ Oberhaidinger, née Heiss, as a chronicler of post-war life in Innsbruck. More than a thousand studio photographs of city residents were selected for the exhibition.

Margit’s father, the landscape photographer Much Heiss, travelled and hiked through Tyrol during the interwar period and established his Alpine art publishing house. His photographs were sent out by the thousands as postcards and were mostly taken outdoors. The mountains, towns, villages and valleys he documented on large-format glass plates have also changed significantly over the last hundred years; his photographs are valuable historical records.

In the photos from Studio Margit, you’re bound to recognise a face or two… Feel free to smile back!

Exhibition team

Curators: Niko Hofinger, Tobias Rettenbacher, Renate Ursprunger

Texts: Niko Hofinger, Matthias Egger, Martin Kofler

Exhibition team: Maria Todorovic, Gregor Dohle, Daniel Kapferer, Martina Pomaro, Wolfgang Wanek, Fabian Woloschyn

Exhibition graphics: himmel. Studio for Design and Communication, Innsbruck

Exhibition design and construction: Robert Simmerle, Harald Pezina

Proofreading: Matthias Kapeller

Education team: Nina Mayer-Wilhelm, Verena Kaiser, Maria Todorovic

Contractors: Rahmen Boschi, digitalfuchs, Pircher Printers, TREVISION Groß.Bild.Technik, Zösmayr Electrical Engineering