THE
DIVE
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.
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