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Tales from the dark side
Anders Petersen came to international attention with his Cafe Lehmitz series, shot over three years at the end of the ‘60s on Hamburg’s notorious Reeperbahn, documenting the fascinatingly motley regulars of said establishment. The work was published in book form in several European countries in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Although it took us at Ag until 1999 (Ag17) to give the work an airing, we were probably still the first British journal to do so. And we are quicker off the mark this time, as in the intervening period Petersen has become someone of a star cult figure, still lauded for that breakthrough project, continuing to take festivals and stages by storm and showing no signs of softening his starkly brutal take on documenting society’s fringes as he approaches retirement age. While there was a certain lightness and humour to Cafe Lehmitz, so far as its grotesque and debauched drunkenness allowed, French Kiss packs a relentless punch, very dark, both literally and metaphorically. Image is piled on image. No text, no white page borders. Even the front and back endpapers form part of the circus. The book is published simultaneously in France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the UK: sounds like they don’t expect French Kiss to remain on the shelves for long. Neither do we.
French Kiss, by Anders Petersen, is published in the UK by Dewi Lewis Publishing at £19.99, ISBN 978-1-904587-58-3.
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