Café Lehmitz

This classic work of analog photojournalism—focusing on the idiosyncratic denizens of an iconic bar in the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany—is now available in a gorgeous new edition that features a tribute by musician and actor Tom Waits.

Photographer Anders Petersen was hanging out at a dive bar on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg in 1968 when someone grabbed his camera from the table where he was sitting and started taking pictures. Petersen used the opportunity to photograph the culprit—and the rest of the bar’s motley crew of patrons.

The resulting project is one of the most revered photobooks of all time, a celebration of a gritty city at the tail end of the sixties, and the cornerstone of Petersen’s storied career. The images have become classics of their genre; Tom Waits used one for the cover of his legendary album Rain Dogs. Their candidness and authenticity remain as eloquent today as when they were first published in 1978.

This sumptuously produced reissue features a new foreword by Waits, and is certain to find a new audience, who will appreciate the stunning analog photography and its elegiac collective portrait of the fringes of society.

Anders Petersen (born 1944) is a Swedish photographer, based in Stockholm. Petersen studied photography in Sweden in the 1960s. He is known for his intimate and personal documentary-style black-and-white photography. For over three years from 1967 he photographed the late-night regulars in Café Lehmitz, a bar in Hamburg, Germany. Café Lehmitz has since become regarded as a seminal book in the history of European photography

In 1970 Petersen co-founded SAFTRA, the Stockholm group of photographers, with Kenneth Gustavsson. He was director of the Göteborg School of Photography and Film He began to photograph for magazines, and continued his personal photo diary work, which continues to this day. He has photographed for extensive periods of time in prisons, mental asylums, and elderly care homes.

Petersen has published over 20 books on photography. 

Roger Anderson was a distinguished journalist and author based in Munich, Germany.