Berlin Nightlife's Gatekeepers, by Sven Marquardt | November 12, 2020

Our current exhibition, On the Inside - Portraiture Through Photography features five photographers whose work takes them deep inside the circles and communities they are chronicling. Works by Lisa Crafts, Laura Heyman, Pixy Liao, Sven Marquardt and Marie Tomanova investigate, respectively, the realm of environmental and climate change activists, the Grand Rue neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the intimate relationship between the photographer and her boyfriend, the world of Berlin nightlife, and the vibrant youth culture of New York City. Sven Marquardt is famed throughout Berlin as the notorious nightclub bouncer and gatekeeper at the world-famous Berghain. As a photographer, he has a history of chronicling the intense subculture of the German Democratic Republic in East Berlin in the 80s. Since then, Marquardt has amassed a body of intensely provocative yet intimate portraits of the denizens of Berlin nightlife. In these selections from his series, Rudel, Marquardt goes beyond the intimidating exteriors of the bouncers who guard the doors of Germany’s nightclubs to glimpse their inner workings with the kind of nuanced understanding that only comes with a deep, personal solidarity. Marquardt’s most recent European exhibition, Stageless, was mounted in the empty halls of the famed concert venue, Friedrichstadt-Palast Berlin, where his portraits of members of the international dance ensemble showed them in the offstage moments right after performance. The exhibition, which was originally slated to remain up through the end of November, had to close early due to new COVID-19 closures in Germany. Here are both an article and an interview with Marquardt, offering deeper insight into this monumental installation.