c/o Zimmer 48
Zossenerstr. 48
10961 Berlin – Kreuzberg
ADMISSION PRICE
Free admission
Browse Gallery
10.03.2023
7–10pm
Opening / Vernissage
Vibes: The Essence of the Moment
Black-and-White Photographs of the Berlin Jazz Days from Axel Benzmann

To date, only a small fraction of the oeuvre of Berlin-based photographer Axel Benzmann (1939–2009) is known to the public. In the exhibition Vibes, the Browse Gallery presents a selection of black-and-white photographs of jazz musicians from the 1960s and 1970s from Benzmann’s estate, consisting of original and retrospectively developed prints. From the mid-1960s, Benzmann worked as a freelance photographer for West Berlin newspapers and magazines. He mainly photographed the city’s (sub)cultures and nightlife; in 1968 he documented the student protests. From 1967 to the early 1980s, Benzmann documented the Berlin Jazz Days in the Philharmonic. His images feature the musicians who defined and reinvented jazz, including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Roberta Flack, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Sarah Vaughan. With perspectives limited by the available space and the musicians’ spontaneous expressiveness, Benzmann’s finely calibrated observations bear witness to his prodigious photographic skills.