Cafe Lehmitz
1982
$501.00
First edition of Cafe Lehmitz by Anders Petersen (1982). Medium format hardcover in very good condition. Title page signed by the artist with a personalized inscription to Chris Steele-Perkins. Slight wear due to age. Writing in Swedish. Please see photos for reference.
About
From 1967, Peterson spent three years photographing late-night regulars (prostitutes, transvestites, drunks, lovers and junkies) in Café Lehmitz, a red-light bar in Hamburg's Reeperbahn district. The resulting photobook has since become regarded as a seminal work in the history of European photography. One photo was used as the cover art for Tom Waits' 1985 album Rain Dogs.
Since then, he has gone on to publish more than 20 books, almost all of which feel like personal diaries of his experiences with people and places that are only encountered in the outskirts of towns or under cover of darkness.
For an extend period of time, he practically lived in a high-security prison to make the photographs for his 1984 book, Fängelse. He has also documented, in his highly personal style, the people in an insane asylum, and others living in a home for old people. In each body of work, Anders Petersen forces us to regard — from often uncomfortably close vantage points — situations and people that most of us would avoid at all costs. Yet, what he reveals is tenderness, beauty, and common humanity.
