Mischa Fanghaenel is a « Coup de Cœur » of one of our contributors, Marine Aubenas.
Who has never heard of Berghain? A mythical Berlin club, a temple of techno, whose very name is enough to awaken all kinds of fantasies and imaginings.
Some have heard of it in passing conversation, others have pored over forums for hours; the boldest have braved the queue to try their luck… Everyone has speculated about what lies behind that raw façade and those fogged-up first-floor windows.
For while the name is known to all, the place itself is truly known only to a few, protected by a carefully filtered entrance and by the ban on cameras—rare enough today to be worth noting, at a time when everything is lived, captured, and shared through screens. But behind the myth and the stone, what remains?
Agnès Varda already put it perfectly: “I believe people are still the most interesting thing there is.” A sentence that could sum up NACHTS, the project of the photographer—and the club’s own bouncer—Mischa Fanghaenel.
Because that is precisely what he chooses to look at here, once again, after doing so for more than fifteen years from the entrance door: people; those who inhabit the club. The community that, every weekend, gives body and soul to these concrete walls.
Berghain thus becomes here what it has never ceased to be: not an obscure fortress, but a tangible humanity proud and beautiful from anonymous regulars to celebrated DJs, whom Mischa Fanghaenel captures with sensitivity, cheerfulness, and always deep respect.
Back to the genesis.
The idea for the photographic series was born during the first lockdown, when Berghain, like all the clubs in the world, suddenly became silent. Roland Barthes wrote that “photography has something to do with resurrection.” Was it then a coincidence that it was precisely when the scene disappeared that the photographer felt the need to immortalize it?
Mischa would not put it in those terms. What drives him, he says, is to show the scene as he sees it: “I wanted to preserve something. I wanted to remember the scene in the right way, because I was reading and hearing things I didn’t recognize. I wanted to show the very beautiful and very positive side of this whole community.”
The project slowly took root in the enforced silence of 2020, and NACHTS was truly born only two years later. Because before getting started, Mischa took his time: to ask, to listen, to obtain the club owners’ approval. Long steps, but essential for someone who is always seeking to act with accuracy.
The decisive spark would be an Instagram story. He announced there that he was looking for members of the community for a portrait project. The effect was immediate: an avalanche of responses for several weeks. A voluntary momentum he compares to what he offers every weekend at the club door: “I don’t invite anyone. People know I’m there, that the club is open.” Not to solicit: to welcome, always. But not just anyone. Not in just any way.
Because whether in the club or in the studio, the challenge is the same: to create a safe space, a space of freedom, where everyone feels at ease. To be “normal,” as Mischa understands it and not as society dictates to us meaning: to be oneself.
Over the years, Mischa has seen many faces arrive for the first time, come back for the second, the tenth… He has seen them change too identity, life grow older, have children, move away, return only once a year. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone understands that here, there is a space for them. That they are right in what they are.” Because at Berghain, you can be more than what you are outside. Without judgment. “To be yourself to a degree you never knew before.”
“I started the portraits because I love beautiful people,” he says. And what is it to be beautiful, Mischa? “Beauty is being at peace with yourself.”
To be at peace with yourself in order to be so with others. As you move through his portraits, it is less individuality that prevails than the Berghain community, and with it that of Berlin club culture. Same formats, same black and white, same frontality, the same anonymity of the people photographed famous DJs included. NACHTS adopts a visual language that places each person on an equal footing. It is the very philosophy of Berghain. Because there, all horizons intersect. The profession, life paths, physique, age, identity, gender doesn’t matter. What matters is being there, together. Like the crowd on the dancefloor. Free and united. United in that freedom above all. Watching, lingering at the bar or in a dark corner, talking, dancing. “That is what I find profoundly beautiful about this place: everyone takes part at their own pace, choosing for themselves how far they wish to go.”
Some digital artists have taken up his portraits to animate them, to make them vibrate to the rhythm of Len Faki’s music. A natural extension of Mischa’s vision: that of an intertwined humanity, where faces answer and blend into one another. In harmony.
But let’s return to the fixed format, that of the photographer. For Mischa, choosing aluminum as a support was a revelation. On this material, blacks gain depth, the whole gains contrast, and nothing comes between the face and the one who looks at it. No glass, no reflections. The photograph presents itself as it is. Raw. Raw, but also changing, because throughout the day it evolves with the light. An evolution that echoes the scene itself, always in metamorphosis. No one had documented this scene like that ten years earlier, and some things, Mischa regrets, are now lost. So to immortalize—not to say it was “better,” but to fix the moment. Simply to say: that’s how it was, at that time.
And in this movement, what endures? For Mischa, the answer is simple: happiness.
“I do two jobs that seem opposite: bouncer and photographer. But in both cases, I’m there for the same thing: to see people smile.”
What’s next? “I would be happy if someone carries on the project five years from now,” he confides.
Until the next generation arrives, we’re mostly hoping for an exhibition soon otherwise it’s up to us to make a face. And that, Mischa wouldn’t allow. Would he?
Marine Aubenas
Represented by Quinto
www.quinto.com
