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Just a few weeks after my exhibition in one of the most charming photo places in West Berlin, Hotel Bogota is in serious trouble. The Hotel Bogota is not only the last “Salonhotel” on  Kurfürstendamm but also a grand piece of Berlin’s cultural history. Before the war, there was the studio of fashion photographer Yva, where Helmut Newton learned his craft. The list of photographers who have photographed and exhibited there is endless. The hotel also hosts a lot of other cultural events – from art exhibitions to literature, from Tango nights to readings, concerts, whatever.

What’s best for a hotel that has financial trouble? BOOK IT.

Forget the large hotel chains that ruin family run hotels such as the Hotel Bogota. Ignore the illegal holiday flats that have become so pupular in Berlin. They don’t even pay tax!

Hotel  Bogota has three price categories, the cheapest affordable even for backpackers. Stay where all the big names form Newton to Parr stay when they are in Berlin. In the probably most photogenic hotel in Berlin!

Sign the online petition. More information on the Hotel’s facebook page. And here is a German article from Tagesspiegel.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who attended the opening at Café Aroma yesterday. It was a very special evening for me.
Can anyone email me some pictures from the event? I only have a few taken before and after…

The exhibition is on until October. Details.

The third room will host photographs form my latest b/w series NACHT.
The gorilla photo is part of it and was just published by tip Magazin for a 2 page announcement about the exhibition. Today we will set up the exhibition, opening is tomorrow. I’m really looking forward….
(Info: www.reister-images.de)

Room 2 will be ALEX‘s room. 40 photos – that’s almost every picture from the book. The new prints are darker and rougher. They really fit to the mood of the series, I think.

I took the weekend off to prepare my next exhibition which will take place in three rooms of Café Aroma, Berlin Schöneberg (Opening date is June 6th – check my website for details).

The first room will be some kind of “Best of Berlin” from recent years and it turns out that it will all be photos from the Berlin+Wien project that is still on exhibition in Vienna at the moment. The oldest picture in the show will be the one above. It is from 2006. It was part of my first “Urban B’Sides” exhibition five years ago but somehow I lost sight of it. Maybe I thought it was “too easy” as it was taken around some art event on a parking deck in Neukölln. It’s always strange how some images gain more importance with time while others fade away within a few month after you thought it was a great shot.

“Every city, no matter how it looks, is a work of art.”
- says Daido Moriyama in this beautiful video.

The new exhibition at FENSTER61 shows photographs from irinadabo taken in public toilets. Wot?? Well – here you go…

My little exhibition “Nacht” at Hotel Bogota / photoplatz

I’m preparing my next exhibition in Berlin at the moment. It’s going to be hosted by Café Aroma Photogalerie in Berlin Schöneberg. In fact it’s not a café but one of the best Italian restaurants in town that opened somewhen in the 80s and has a long tradition as a photo venue since then. Opening is on June 6, 8pm.

As the exhibition will be in three rooms I’m going to show a “Berlin Trilogy” – three of my latest Berlin realted works: ALEX, NACHT and some “Best of Street Photography from recent years”.

A quote from the press release….

Berlin kann ganz still sein. Auch wenn alle so tun, als befinde sich die Stadt in einem ewigen Bedeutungsrausch aus Kreativität, Party und Umsturz, finden sich doch immer genug Nischen, in denen eigentlich gar nichts wichtiges passiert. In diesen Ecken stöbert Christian Reister die ganz normalen Menschen auf: Alte und Junge, Tagträumer und Nachtschwärmer, graue Mäuschen und affektierte Selbstdarsteller. Sie bewegen sich am Rande des Geschehens, tun manchmal oft nichts und verfangen sich doch immer wieder in Situationen von wunderbar abseitiger Skurrilität. So werden sie auf Reisters Fotos festgehalten, die unter ihrer oft humorvollen Oberfläche immer auch ein wenig Melancholie in sich tragen und einen besonderen, subjektiven Blick auf das Leben im heutigen Berlin werfen.

Save the date for the opening – I’m expecting the best buffet of any opening ever!

See you in Vienna!

Some photos from the opening last Friday by Frank Machalowski.

A premiere of a special kind. Would that work? My pictures with the songs of Andreas Albrecht, that have a high atmospheric density and lyrics (in German!) that are very elementary and dominating? Would the images interfere the music or the music drown the pictures?

What we definitly didn’t want to do was one of those “every 5 seconds changes the picture” slideshows with some instrumental flavor enhancers. The compositions should communicate with the pictures at eye level. There are parts in the show where the images kind of comment on the lyrics as well as parts where the music carries the photographs literally to a whole other level. Since a few weeks we have fought with every single image slice and fading length and worked one or the other night on fine tuning and polishing up the final technical issues.

Just in time for yesterday’s opening at Hotel Bogota, everything was ready and maybe I was the one, who was the most overwhelmed by the result. It is a big fortune and great honor to work with such great professional musicians like Andreas Albrecht and Marco Ponce Kärgel. And one was obvious right after the final cord of yesterday’s performance: it was certainly not the last time we where working together for a performance like this.

What a great relief, what a big experience. Wonderful. Thanks to a great audience and a very special venue – the Hotel Bogota.
Most of the songs are from Andreas’ latest album TAGEBUCHt. Order it here, it’s outstanding.

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Berlin 2012

Last preperations for the screening with live concert + opening.
It’s going to be an experiment. An exciting one.
Details here, here and here.

The Leica blog published an interview with me yesterday. Something between reality and fiction.

Found an interesting interview with John Gossage on the website of the independent photobook library today. Self-publishing from Ed Rusha’s first artist books form the 60s until today.