A beach is a beach is a beach: About Jörg Rubbert‘s wonderful beach photography book “Beach Lovers”

Pho­to books about the sea should be declared a genre of their own. Mar­tin Parr’s „Life’s a Beach”, which reports on the absur­di­ty of beach life. Philip Plisson’s „The Sea”, which reports ency­clopaed­i­cal­ly about the visu­al phe­nom­e­na of the sea. Mar­co Pesaresi’s „Rim­i­ni”, which doc­u­ments the mor­bid nature of a sea­side hol­i­day resort out of sea­son. And now: Jörg Rubbert’s „Beach Lovers”.

Rub­bert tells of the rela­tion­ship between peo­ple and the sea. Rub­bert is a street pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the won­der­ful­ly clas­sic sense, only this time he was­n’t strolling along the streets of the cities of the world, but the beach­es of the world. He suc­ceeds in won­der­ful­ly rough, direct, sharply observed images, which in their imme­di­ate imper­fec­tion remind me again and again of Wino­grand.

Any­one who knows Rubbert’s black and white street pho­tographs, for exam­ple from his book “Paris – New York – Berlin. Street Pho­tog­ra­phy 1978–2010 ”, will be hap­py to dis­cov­er that Rub­bert is a colour pho­tog­ra­phy mas­ter as well. He works care­ful­ly with the col­or palette that beach life offers, from the rich blue tones of the sky and the sea, the sand-col­ored brown tones of the beach, the vari­ety of col­or vari­a­tions that the twi­light offers to the often bright red accents that he sets.

And what is Rub­bert telling us with his pic­tures: About the strollers on the board­walk in Atlantic City in 1987, which from today’s per­spec­tive already radi­ate so much from the past that one thinks it should actu­al­ly be 1957. Of dogs and chil­dren on the beach, with images that have the pow­er to trig­ger acoustic asso­ci­a­tions in us, of chil­dren scream­ing, laugh­ing, bark­ing dogs, the sound of the sea. From hat wear­ers of all stripes: The red-capped lady who holds her hat with both hands on Mia­mi Beach; the black-capped French who looks over his shoul­der on the beach in Nice as if he were a mafiosi and would like to cast a sus­pi­cious look at the pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Most impor­tant, how­ev­er, are the spe­cial facial expres­sions and ges­tures that Rub­bert pho­tographs of his pro­tag­o­nist. The two old­er gen­tle­men of dif­fer­ent sizes pat­ting each other’s shoul­ders on the beach in Nazaré; the pos­ing, exer­cis­ing old beau in the tight red bathing trunks on the beach of Nice, who one would trust all kinds of love affairs even with his over 70s – and who has some­how almost become an icon of Rubbert’s pho­to­graph­ic work.

Rubbert’s splen­did pho­to­book, which was pub­lished by the Berlin-based Palm Art Press-Ver­lag, brings togeth­er 148 col­or pho­tographs from over 30 years and doc­u­ments life on around 50 beach­es around the world. The Berlin gallery for young artists + design­ers (Grunewald­str. 15, 10823 Berlin, www.jkd-berlin.de) is show­ing a selec­tion of the works until August 7, 2021.

Jörg Rub­bert: BEACH LOVERS
176 pages
148 col­or pho­tographs
Hard­cov­er
24,5 x 28,5 cm
Ger­man / Eng­lish
ISBN: 978−3−96258−046−9

#We love the sea­side
galerie für junge kün­stler- + designer­In­nen berlin
Grunewald­str. 15
10823 Berlin
www.jkd-berlin.de
Dura­tion of the exhi­bi­tion: 12.06. until 08/07/2021
Open­ing times: Thurs­day and Fri­day 3:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.; Sat., 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.