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14/2/2007

The Dive

White Trash Contemporary, Hamburg

Jerry Berndt - American Bar Rooms + Karen Koltermann - Quelleck

White Trash Contemporary presents "Combat Zone" series of award winning US photographer Jerry Berndt and the video "Quelleck" by German artist Karen Koltermann

"I grew up in my father's bar room in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I learned to read by putting empty beer bottles into the right boxes..." That's how laconic Jerry Berndt discribes the starting point for his impressive photo series about bar rooms and strip clubs in America of the 60s and 70s. In rich black and white contrast these pictures offer an unflinching look at the shadowy world of lonesome drinkers, desperate hookers and blinding neon signs. The mood ocillates between glitzy film noir elegance and desolate jazz age melancholy. Sammy Davis Jr. meets Charles Bukowsky. Formally Berndt is following in the tradition of great American photo realists like Walker Evans and Robert Frank.There will also be photographs from Berndt's famous "Combat Zone" series. That's how Boston's notorious red light district was called in the 60s, when Berndt worked there on assignment for Harvard Medical School's "Laboratory of Community Psychiartry". The images of black panderers and prostitutes reveal where the glorification of "pimp lifestyles" in today's black getto culture and hip hop videos has its roots.

Karen Koltermann video work "Quelleck" shows the ghostly atmosphere of a German bar today. The footage for her seven minute video loop was shot in an East Berlin bar named "Quelleck" (which roughly means "wellspring corner") and digitally layered serveral times. The result is a moody video projection of the bar as the perpetual center of gravity with blurry figures drifting in and out of the picture.

Jerry Berndt was born 1943 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For more than 30 years he has built a career as a documentary photographer with series on the genocide in Ruanda, civil war in Haiti und homeless people in the US. His pictures are published in major publications in the US and Europe, i.e. the New York Times, Newsweek und Paris Match. His work won major awards, i.e. grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the University of California. His photos are represented in the permanant collections of major museums like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Bibliotheque National in Paris. He taught photography at the Art Institute in Boston and at Univeristy of Massachusetts. Today Berndt lives with his wife and son in Paris, France.

Karen Koltermann was born 1964 in Bremen and studied Visual Arts and Design at HFBK Hamburg. She lives and works in Berlin.

Under the title "The Dive" White Trash Contemporary presents Jerry Berndt's work for the first time in Germany. On the occasion of this exceptional "bar room"-show the gallery space itself will be transformed into a stylish dive bar with real working coctail bar and live entertainment. On opening night and on friday and saturday nights drinks will be served at an original 60s style bar to loungy jazz and blues music tunes.

"This is photography as emotion. Jerry goes somewhere and makes you feel what it felt like, not just what it looked like." Eugene Richards, photographer (Magnum)

"Following the rhythm of some of Thelonius Monk's bitter blues, under the brotherly glimmer of Robert Frank's wistful pictures, between the alcoholic lines of Hemingway, the pictures of Jerry Berndt sadly waltz." Natacha Wolinski, Infomatin

This exhibition is sponsored by Pilsner Urquell and Bacardi.

White Trash Contemporary
Willy-Brandt Strasse 56 Hamburg
Opening hours: Wed,Thu 13-19 . Fri, Sat 13-17

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