Cabaret Bizarre
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Dates2013 - Ongoing
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Author
For over 6 years, I have been photographing at the ’Cabaret Bizarre’ events. They are places and spaces of self-indulgent joie de vivre, where the boundaries between gloomy despair and cheerful ecstasy become lasciviously blurred and artistic freedom takes on bizarre dimensions. Here, hedonism flamboyantly and ostentatiously triumphs over asceticism.
Cabaret Bizarre was originally inspired by the dark cabarets of the Weimar Republic in the early 1930s Berlin when the Nazi takeover was about to happen and freedom of the arts and culture reared up a final time against the imminent downfall.
Cabaret Bizarre is a place for dazzling personalities and non-conformists escaping from the world of conventions and mass consumption. A place where diversity and beauty but also ugliness find their home. It is a curiosity cabinet, a freak show, a carnival of desires in the sense of Fellini and Brecht. Elegance meets Trash, and the night becomes an exuberant masquerade ball, significantly involving the audience.
I shoot photos of the show itself, but also of the performers in preparation or shortly after their performance. These moments of concentration, nervousness or calmness, this behind-the-scenes look and this unbiased closeness to the artists is what I am interested in. This is how hundreds of backstage shots of the hustle and bustle have been created in the last years.