Wallen Amsterdam by Dana Lixenberg, Roma Publications

Published on the occasion of the exhibition "De Wallen" at Stadsarchief Amsterdam (Amsterdam City Archives) from 12 September 2025 to 15 February 2026.

De Wallen Amsterdam is a portrait of Amsterdam’s Red Light District, the historic neighbourhood where photographer Dana Lixenberg spent her early childhood.

It offers insight into a diverse community where residents, sex workers, tourists, and others converge in relative harmony, but not always without friction. Shot on film with a large-format camera, between 2021 and 2025, the series consists of intimate black-and-white portraits of locals, visitors, artists, sex workers, drifters, and entrepreneurs, shown alongside detailed historic interiors in colour, revealing what lies behind the facades of the alleys and canals.

Her work on De Wallen, created between 2021 and 2025, does not focus on the excesses in the community, the result of overtourism and overconsumption. Nor does she take a position on the recent political and communal efforts to contain these excesses.

The book also includes stills from a video installation, part of an exhibition at the Stadsarchief (Amsterdam City Archives) ; printed on 1500 copies, texts by Jenny Smets, Emma Los and Merel Moes.

De Wallen Amsterdam by Dana Lixenberg. Roma Publications, 2025.

• Format: Softcover

• Dimensions: 240mm x 320mm

• Pages: 192

• Illustrations: Colour & black-and-white

• Publisher: Roma Publications

• ISBN: 9789464460889

• Edition: First edition

• Language: English