Peppered throughout major cities, including Berlin, where the new photobook Triple Seven by Anne Lass was shot, are clandestine spaces that most of the population will never enter or see. Men’s clubs in North London, brothels in Marseilles, and small gambling rooms in Berlin, as Lass has photographed, are secreted behind a façade of shopfronts with improbable doorways that neither deny welcome nor fully embrace it. Inside these worlds lies a specific interior space, often anachronistic, that carries the atmosphere of a bizarre, unfathomable Twentieth-century fantasy. Rich saturated paint permeates the walls, and yet they are often low-lit environments; the customers or punters for such spaces prefer a dim environment. To say seedy would be wrong. These are halls of ritual.
This dimly lit atmosphere is often contrasted by neon bulbs in red and blue that hint at a misdated and often strange futurism. The carpet is of a typical stock bearing anything from neutral red to dark shades of purple with fleur de Lis patterns gripping the gum off the sole from the shoe carrying it and untold other elements from the street inside the rooms. Perhaps a chamber is a better way of describing the ambiance found inside. Cracked vinyl bar stools and wood-backed chairs adorn the simple atmosphere, and a haze of cigarette smoke seems to be a perfect accouterment to such meeting places. Under the facade of cosmic interior decor and thinly enameled bar fronts is a social anthropology about human desire and, perhaps oddly, hope—the hope of winning it big or simply plugging along with each tap of the electronic gambling machine.
Futurism is about selling the dream of tomorrow, and instant gratification found in such establishments offers a grand schema for getting laid, drunk, or rich, all tenets of modern living that may not deliver a future but gratify the short distance between the here-and-now and its possible counterpart with the fulfillment of simple urges and addictions. If one were cynical, one could describe such venues as traps. If one were fair, they would be viewed as a simple measure to excoriate the volatile condition and pressures of contemporary urban life, offering an unspoken solace and place to whittle the hours away. As the Romanian/French poet Emil Cioran has opined (in paraphrase), perhaps one does not ask to be born into this world, but one is demanded a toil between the hesitant bouts of life and un-life stacked on each side of our two key moments: birth and death. To quote directly from The Trouble with Being Born: “I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass—which is better than trying to fill them.”
Triple Seven is a book about such spaces. Still, it does not presume a documentary tendency or a direct relationship to the science of social anthropology or the comical depravity of Cioran. It borders on the typological, insisting on a catalog of a thing in this world over and over, but denies the essence of categorizing the aggregate images as rudimentary or reductive. Instead, the work is photographic in as much as what Lass seeks are not answers but observations about light, color, and the occasional portrait study. Stylistically, one is immediately reminded of Eggleston’s Red ceiling picture (Greenwood, Mississippi 1973)—color for color’s sake in a number of the images, with an additional question about whether the crime is aesthetic or relational. There is no judgment passed in the Lass’s photographs. They simply exist, and since the closure of nearly all gambling halls in the city of Berlin in 2011, they live in the ether now, like a time capsule, a study for the future beautifully bound in a compelling book.
For reasons not entirely explicit to me, I am also reminded of Guido Guidi’s or Paul Graham’s portrait studies (In Veneto and A1: The Great North Road, respectively) when I look at the employees of these gambling halls. I am unsure if that is their stoic façade or their colorfully illuminated, sometimes backlit, natural condition, which works as a bulwark against the more saturated gem-like color of the interior spaces in which they work. It pounds one more nail into the coffin of a future to see such interiors denuded by the everyday frankness of the artist’s human subjects. There are other projects about casinos. Russ Meyer (yes, that one) had a body of work about casinos from the 60s. More recently, António Júlio Duarte’s White Noise, published by Pierre Von Kleist, also saw a close treatment of casinos in Macau. In the latter’s case, it would be worth mentioning how incredible that book is. But these images by Lass have an individual toehold as they are shot quietly and are individualized to a great degree. They do not stylistically remind me too closely of any of the names of other artists that I have mentioned above. The artist’s skillset is singular, and the images should be regarded in their own right.
In terms of design, the book is gorgeous, and the printing is beautiful. The conceptually congruent cover material choice has a faux leatherette feel, similar to Deanna Lawson’s published by MACK recently. It reminds the viewer of the tables and furniture inside of the frames. The square format suits the rectangular photographs well, leaving enough border to contemplate the color images and the environment of their making, giving each image space enough to be considered independently. This beckons not only the photography literate observer with an appreciation of the subject matter and technique but also invites the potential to be understood in their latent cultural context. This creates a highly successful book. When an artist can contemplate culture, historical relevance, and artistry into a seemingly simple project, it has all the earmarks of being successful outside of the photobook community as well as within, which makes it valuable on more levels than just the insular spectrum of medium-specific enthusiasts.
Every once in a while, you can spot a great book at a distance as it makes its way onto social media channels. I had a very intuitive sense that this would be a fine photobook. Given Disko Bay’s recent rise to excellence in photobook making, it does not surprise me that this book is as fantastic as it is. It is a late shoe-in for 2023, and I think it is one of the year’s finest titles. Highly Recommended!
Original Press Specifications
Anne Lass
Triple Seven
Disko Bay
One cannot thank Anne Lass enough for preserving these wonderful worlds of postmodern madness in such unique images for posterity. – Nela Eggenberger
Leather sofas and fitted carpets, radiant shapes and dark corridors. Disko Bay is thrilled to present Anne Lass’s new colorful book Triple Seven, an immersive documentation of Berlin’s disappearing gambling dens, in a narrative that plays with elements from distant galaxies, exotic islands, and futuristic landscapes.
Red, violet, and blue colors permeate the images, but there’s more at play than just form and color. The Danish-German photographer lived in Berlin from 2007 to 2014, where she was fascinated by the many gambling halls in the Berlin cityscape, most of which was located in the poorer neighborhoods. Lass visited over 100 of Berlin’s approximately 500 small casinos and went on a picture hunt in these often closed and private environments. Here, she documented old machines, gaming tables, and the people who frequented them. Not to condemn, but to try to understand and take the players’ desires seriously: the hope for a better life and the longing for a bit of happiness.
After new legislation came into effect a few years ago, many of the gaming establishments had to close, and over 80% of them have already disappeared, with many of them depicted in this work.
The project sheds light on a phenomenon that is relevant beyond the borders of Berlin – humanity’s eternal pursuit of (financial) happiness. At the same time, it is a visual investigation of the signs, symbols, and objects deliberately used to seduce. It is a photographic record of districts undergoing change due to crises and gentrification, and a documentation of places that have not been extensively explored until now.
Anne Lass (b. 1978) is an acclaimed Danish-German photographer living and working on the island of Bornholm. Her richly descriptive, medium-format color photographs present an eclectic mix of places, objects or individuals rooted in a quiet still life tradition merging documentary form and poetic tenderness. Lass holds a diploma in Documentary Photography from Folkwang Hochschule der Künste and has had multiple solo and group exhibitions in Europe and USA. Her works are included in the collections of Museum of Avantgarde, Danish Arts Foundation and C/O Berlin.
A limited Print Edition with a signed print will be available soon.
Reserve your copy now and save 15% off. All pre-orders are signed by the artist and shipped directly from us in Copenhagen.
- Faux leather bound hardback with tip in and embossed text
- 28 cm x 27cm
- 108 pages
- 52 colour plates
- Essay by Nela Eggenberger
- Language: German and English
- Edition of 700
- Printed in Denmark by Narayana Press
- ISBN 978-87-973526-6-3
- Published 9 November 2023