The photographers Anna Lehmann-Brauns, Friederike von Rauch, and Stefanie Schweiger explore the parts of the bar that are completely silent and where it stands for itself. As viewers, it is impossible to resist being pulled into these scenes. You can almost feel the coolness of the beer glass between your fingers and smell the stale air of the bar. Spiritually the feeling is somewhere between stupor and Zen—meditations at the bar.
Lehmann-Brauns, von Rauch, and Schweiger are unusual chroniclers of bar life since they do not frequent bars themselves. They approach this strange world with care, sensitivity, and often even tenderness—and this particular attitude is what allows the special magic of the corner bar to come into focus.
Sometimes the bars are glamorous as in Stefanie Schweiger’s portraits of bartenders, who rule over their domain like kings or queens. While the bartenders in her portraits vary greatly, you can tell they have all seen a lot—and they have heard a lot from people who pour their hearts out at the bar after their fourth or fifth beer.
“Never get involved, never give advice—just listen,” is what Matthias Gerhus says. He learned this from his father, whose bar, Bornholmer Hütte, he took over thirty years ago. “I always say: you can tell me everything. I am bound to confidentiality, but most importantly I forget. As soon as all of the guests have left, I delete everything from my work memory.”
Bartenders are chroniclers without a pen. They are firsthand witnesses to fashions, pearls of wisdom, jokes, wisecracks, pick-up lines, neuroses, conspiracy theories, fears, and delusions, decade after decade. They experience history every evening.
Text Angela Köckritz