Halbstark Baby-Baby Halbstark!: Teenage Street Gangs in Switzerland 1962-1972

Dieter Ehrlich

Hardcover | 20.96 x 1.55 x 20.96 cm | 268 pp

Kicks Books | 2024 | 9781940157191

Lost photographs of teenage street gangs in Switzerland in the 1960s from the scrapbook of gang leader Dieter Ehrlich. Includes brief history of the gangs and photographs taken behind the scenes at coffee bars and in the streets of Basel and surrounding environs.

For rebel youth enthusiasts the world over, Dieter “lgel’ Ehrlich’s moody and magnificent photographs of 1960s Swiss gang life arrive as a retina-scorching revelation. As a member of the hellacious ‘halbstark’ (half-strong) Express Killers Club, lgel was on hand to capture these teenage gal and guy greasers, roughnecks and ruffians as they kicked against the pricks and provoked polite society. Resplendent in bouffants and pompadours, hand-tooled cowboy boots, decorated leathers, and denims bleached with the names of their heroes, they ran wild in the streets, the countryside and in the underground bars of Basel, Zurich and Aesch.

The sheer attitude and sartorial spontaneity displayed by lgel’s photography
communicates an utterly contemporary aura; today’s mainstream fashion shoots can only hope to achieve a small percentage of the combined carnality, toughness and danger presented by this extraordinary body of work.