There is a first exile in the life of Pablo Tabernero which could probably be applied to the decade he spent away from his mother in Berlin. He left during the pandemic of the Spanish Flew and the civil unrest of the November uprisings of 1919, and he will only return in 1927 to enroll a student at the Lette-Verein School of design. It was there that he was taught basic instruction in the art of photography.
In the 1940s Pablo Tabernero will be distinguished as one of the founders of modern cinematography in Argentina, at the time a vibrant industry that served as a beacon to the rest of Latin America, even inspiring up and coming directors of photography in Hollywood studios. In the documentary film “Searching for Tabernero” I was determined to establish early influences that help to shape the cinematographer’s technic, and I came across several references of which the Lette-Verein School in Berlin was just the beginning. In the sequence dedicated to the period 1927-1929, I choose to include several of the surviving “School Project” in order to illustrate his progress. The song that underscores the segment is, of course, "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" (German: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer") or simply put “Mack The Knife” a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht in his own performance. The song was composed in 1928 for the musical The Threepenny Opera (German: Die Dreigroschenoper), and it extremely popular by the time Pablo Tabernero graduated as Photographer Assistant from the Lette-Verein School in Berlin.
Back in the day, Pablo Tabernero was known as Peter Paul Weinschenk, son of Ernst Weinschenk, a distinguished architect and committed woodcut artist. His name will change several years later as he disembarked in Buenos Aires fleeing persecution in Europe.