Présentation
The photography of century shops tells about dark and also partly hidden and forgotten interior worlds : Empty rooms show the entrance in the shop or a workshop in the back room, often not even open to the public. The square pictures focus on details, old writings, faded magazine photos, tools and old machines stand next to objects from today.
"There are books that teach you to look at the familiar as if you were seeing it for the first time. The photo book "Jahrhundertläden" from Lehmstedt Verlag is such a case. The reader is promised nothing less than a "historical shopping trip" through Berlin. To places where a business idea wrote history over generations. To traditional businesses, the oldest of which began operations in 1852. In pictures and words, Claire Laude and Sabine Zimmer enable mental excursions through a Berlin that seems like the lost paradise of capitalism. The journey leads from the fishing shop to the magic shop, from antique jewellery to pewter figures. In between are slippers and pipes, books and tree cakes, corsets and artificial flowers. One browses, reads and would like to step into Claire Laude's photographs. For the French photographer and architect, who has lived in the German capital since 1998, stages Berlin's workspaces as cultural sites. The focus is less on details than on atmosphere. Instead of narrowing the perspective, Laude opens the space to the eye of the beholder. The photographs present each shop with owners, but even more often empty of people. As a condensed world of goods. Specialised hodgepodge. Orderly variety. As a shop for connoisseurs. Sometimes the eye is caught by umbrellas in the shop window, sometimes by a dummy fish opening its mouth in the fishing shop. Some shots seem as if the photographer had secretly entered, so oblivious is a cobbler continuing to work on his lasts, so concentrated is a man at the end of the room bending over a historical sewing machine. "Jahrhundertläden" (Century Shops) unagitatedly portrays Berlin's traditional shops. The portraits of the shop owners convey the pride and self-confidence of people who belong entirely to their spaces. Who understand their craft and know how to defend it. Ready to navigate the visitor through the cosmos of goods on demand. The images of Berlin's shops captivate with the simultaneity of order and multifacetedness. In these places, it seems, one could find everything without having to search. In addition, many a story hangs here between door and door. For example, the story of a Jewish family that found refuge in the cellar of a tailor's shop during the Second World War. Or the one about the shoemaker who made boots for Tom Cruise in his role as Count Stauffenberg. "Jahrhundertläden" is a Berlin book for nostalgics and trendsetters alike. For it is possible that the future of shopping lies precisely where you no longer suspect it. Hidden behind the doors of the "century shops" that kept their heads above water even in Berlin's times of crisis."
Läden für Liebhaber - Text by Carmen Eller