JOERG RUBBERT
JÜRGEN BÜRGIN

"NIGHTSHIFT"
– Street Photography after Dark –

Night impressions from the large metropoles are one of the favorite themes of the two German photographers, Jürgen Bürgin and Joerg Rubbert.
While Joerg Rubbert has put his focus on the European cities of Paris, Berlin and Bratislava, his counterpart, Jürgen Bürgin, is primarily interested in pictures from Asian megacities, such as Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Saigon or Hanoi.
Both common is the preference for night-time impressions from New York, 'the city that never sleeps'. But beside this both photographers have approached the subject from a different angle:
In the black & white street photographs of Joerg Rubbert, the special atmosphere in the night is the central motif. The allurement of night life – aside the red-light-districts – pursues him until today. And even today Joerg Rubbert takes analog pictures. Thereby he always relies on the existing lighting conditions ‒ no illumination, no flash or other technical refinements. For his shots he uses standard lenses to let the framed detail appear as authentic as possible.
Due to the fact that specific conditions occur when somebody is taking pictures at night, most of the pictures seem to be less than perfect and display certain characteristics of a ‘failed and botched’ photograph. So Rubberts pictures are imperfect in the best sense – blurred and coarse-grained – what makes them authentic and which creates a high atmospheric density.    
The colour photographs of Jürgen Bürgin are telling of countless wanderings through the big cities of the world at night. He is meeting bohemians, survivalists, and people who are driven by their passion, their emotions, and their love. He is recording encounters, intimate moments and casual observations. Those special scenes from an everyday life perspective are attracting his attention; he is looking for hidden, secret and weird things – in the nocturnal, rainy streets of Tokyo, in front of the bright skyline of Shanghai, on spontaneous all night dance events in Hanoi or at a burlesque show in New York. Those scenes from the life of metropolitans seem as if they were taken from an imaginary movie.
Bürgins colour photographs are preserving a mystery and they are thus generating a suction effect that captivates the viewer and makes him dive into the big city nights.
Both photographers tell us about their experiences with the most inspiring metropolises of the world. As a result the observer may share the fascinating, unique and anonymous atmosphere of the big cities at night.

                                        Berlin, April 2017