In the Hood

In the centre of Hamburg, not far from the St. Pauli landing stages in Germany’s largest port, is the city’s red-light district, with the legendary Reeperbahn as its main artery. The neighbourhood has retained its unique character to this day and offers a high concentration of various forms of entertainment. Restaurants offering traditional German cuisine are next to small, dimly lit joints, while across the road an elegant nightclub stands cheek by jowl with a brothel. The city’s amusement district is a place for everyone, but as the night progresses it increasingly becomes one for people who live on the margins of society. At this hour, anyone who does not want to go back home, or maybe does not have one to go to, visits one of the bars that are open around the clock and act as a reservoir for those who are lonely or fond of a drink. For many years, one of these was Café Lehmitz, not far from the Reeperbahn, a locale that would still be called a dive, despite its pleasant-sounding name.

It was here in this notorious bar that Swedish photographer Anders Petersen ended up, more by chance, in 1962, when he had only just come of age. The Lehmitz was above all a haunt for pimps, prostitutes, homeless people and conmen – a milieu that fascinated and struck a chord with the young Petersen. Everyone was welcome. They played pinball and darts, smoked, drank, danced and made out without inhibition. Peterson could not get the exuberant, intense atmosphere out of his mind, and after completing his photography degree in Stockholm, he made his way back to Hamburg and to Café Lehmitz. From 1968, he spent three years taking photos of the guests at this exceptional place, thereby immortalising them and the bar. During this time the photographer became a regular guest, spending a large part of his free time there – as well as many a night.

In Petersen’s grainy black-and-white images, a touching yet unsparing portrait of a bygone cosmos unfolds. He photographed the people in the red-light district not as a voyeur, but as one of them. Like an invisible observer, he gets up so close to the guests at Café Lehmitz that you can almost hear the peals of laughter and smell the smoke and alcohol of these night-time excesses. Here, they are among themselves; their affectionate yet coarse intimacy comes across as completely unselfconscious. Despite the exuberant gaiety, their worn-out faces cannot hide the fact that fate has not been particularly kind to them. But in this place, where they are not judged or ostracised, they feel safe. Petersen manages to capture the atmosphere of this bawdy milieu authentically, without demeaning his subjects. His images of these lost souls who have found a home in Café Lehmitz are always compassionate and bear witness to an encounter on equal terms.