PETERSEN, Anders - The Complete Café Lehmitz Family Album

Background information

"In 1978, selected Café Lehmitz pictures by Anders PETERSEN were published for the first time in book form by Schirmer/Mosel. Café Lehmitz, a stand-up beer hall on the Reeperbahn, was the meeting place and often the end of the line for many who worked in Hamburg's red-light district: Prostitutes, pimps, transvestites, day laborers and petty criminals.
Anders PETERSEN was 18 years old when he came to Hamburg from Sweden for the first time and landed rather accidentally in the Lehmitz, where he also began to photograph in 1968.  Immediately recognized as a milestone in social documentary photography, PETERSEN's photographs have since become classics of the genre. Tom WAITS believed he bore a certain resemblance to the man on our cover - 'he looks like me in the arms of Elizabeth TAYLOR after our release from the Betty Ford Clinic' - and used the image for the cover of his record album Rain Dogs.

Content

In the planned presentation of the complete material, 'The Complete Café Lehmitz Family Album' with contact prints of about 1400 pictures, the solidary, reminiscent of BRASSAI look of the Swedish photographer Anders PETERSEN, which does not allow voyeurism or false pity to arise, becomes even clearer.  The 'other' world of Café Lehmitz, which no longer exists in this form today, becomes visible as a living social structure with its own self-image and dignity." (© Schirmer/Mosel Verlag)

About the Swedish photographer Anders PETERSEN (b.1944)

Photo books by Anders PETERSEN