![]() ![]() He went out into the streets and took photos of New Yorkers who caught his eye. Last year, he did a seven-week residency in New York. He has been shooting again for twenty-five years-portraits of a different kind of underground. But too much party, too much drugs, too much everything. We felt like immigrants in our own country. He said, “I lost my identity, with millions of people. Now, in Brooklyn, he said, “It was a little bit for me this feeling that on the other end of the world we have soul mates maybe.”Īfter the Wall fell, Marquardt took a long break from photography. He didn’t say anything to her, but there had been a glance of recognition, or of affinity, between them. So coloring your hair or doing anything which could go in the direction of queer would have caused serious problems.”Ī couple weeks before coming to New York, Marquardt had encountered Patti Smith at Berlin’s Soho House. There has been in East Germany a strong regime of how to look, how to behave in public. “There hasn’t been any clubs then,” Paetke said. “He looks like someone now from the new generation of the club scene. I was twenty-two.” He pointed out another early shot, of a man on a tar roof in a leather cap and jacket, stockings, and high heels. “Here was my first inspiration, a young boy, the same age as me. Mosbeck said, “To receive such things from the West, it was a special thing.” ![]() In a long hallway they’d hung large-format prints he’d taken before the fall of the Wall, when he began shooting pictures of his acquaintances in the East Berlin underground. His English was decent, but now and then he gave up and spoke in German to his companions. Paetke, who is built like a pro wrestler, made Marquardt seem less forbidding, as did Marquardt’s gentle way of speaking. Marquardt, fully armored in Balenciaga (shades, black flight jacket, flared yellow sweatpants, giant black sneakers), was accompanied by Anja Mosbeck, a representative of Galerie Deschler, in Berlin, and Hardy Paetke, Marquardt’s assistant, fellow-doorman, and good friend. “This way is more interesting to me than a gallery,” he said. The show, of old and new work, is called “Disturbing Beauty.” It was opening later that night, at a party with a d.j., where his newer images would be projected on the walls in concert with the techno music. Last month, he visited New York for an exhibition of his work at ArtsDistrict Brooklyn, a cavernous space in Greenpoint. “I worked eighteen years for this house, and it’s a big chance and good memories, but ja, now everyone knows this place.”Īt sixty-one, he is working there less frequently-“I don’t know when my next shift is”-and focussing more on his long side career as a photographer. He’s been in a couple of documentaries (“Berlin Bouncer”), has published a memoir (“ Die Nacht Ist Leben”), and has a cameo in the latest “ John Wick.” (His only line: “I am Klaus.”)ĭoes he get tired of being Herr Berghain? They aren’t his alone, but for better or worse he has become their face. ![]() The criteria for entry are obstinately imprecise. ![]() Typically posted by the entrance, dressed in black, face-tattooed, with lower-lip piercings that look like silver fangs, he has become in his own way world-notorious, too-as an embodiment of Berghain’s old East Berliner queer-punk spirit, and as the intimidating assessor of that spirit’s traces in the aspirants who stand in line. He has been as responsible as anyone for its singular admixture of interesting humans, which, along with its freethinking ethos and its killer sound system, has made it world-famous and very hard to get into. For almost two decades, Sven Marquardt has worked as the doorman and principal sorter at Berghain, the Berlin night club. ![]()
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