The Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin has unveiled an innovative retrospective dedicated to Diane Arbus, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. The exhibition, titled "Constellations," features 454 photographs displayed in an unconventional labyrinthine installation that transforms the museum space into an immersive visual experience. This comprehensive show marks the institution's renewed commitment to photography as a central pillar of its programming.
The exhibition presents a radical departure from traditional museum displays. Instead of hanging photographs on white walls in chronological order, the curators have mounted the mostly square-format images on delicate black grid structures that create a maze-like environment throughout the Gropius Bau. Visitors must search for individual works, including the portrait of author Susan Sontag with her son David, discovering images unexpectedly as they navigate the space. The 454 photographs form a visual matrix without apparent sequence or explanation, with each image competing for attention and creating unexpected dialogues between the faces of Arbus's subjects and the museum visitors themselves.
Arbus's famous quote, "A photograph is a secret about a secret," seems to hover invisibly over the exhibition. The photographer created these works between the late 1950s and early 1970s, before taking her own life on July 26, 1971, at the age of 48, after suffering from severe depression. Today, she stands as one of the most recognized photographers of the 20th century, with numerous exhibitions and publications, particularly the landmark "Revelations" show in 2003 and its accompanying bestselling photobook, attempting to decode the mysteries within her work.
A significant intellectual debate has surrounded Arbus's work, particularly criticism from Susan Sontag in her influential essay "Freak Show," published in her seminal collection "On Photography." Sontag accused Arbus of reviving the historical freak shows of Coney Island fairgrounds, creating what she called "a freak show of pity." According to Sontag, Arbus aestheticized ugliness, equated it with normalcy, and thereby stripped suffering of its moral dimension. She argued that Arbus's gaze was distant, her interest cold, and her privileged status allowed her to look down upon "the others." Sontag viewed Arbus's work as symptomatic of a loss of moral standards in society.
Perhaps this criticism reflected more than just an intellectual disagreement between two prominent figures of the New York avant-garde who met for a portrait session in Central Park in 1966. Both belonged to the city's cultural elite—two strong personalities competing for truth and interpretive authority. The current Berlin exhibition, deliberately titled "Constellations" rather than "Revelations," appears to support critics of Sontag's fundamental critique.
The show reframes Arbus's interest in society's margins as a humanistic impulse rather than cynical equalization. It presents her approach as radical equal treatment rather than exploitative voyeurism. Arbus did not photograph secretly but collaborated with her subjects. She sought to show what pluralistic society encompasses, anticipating acceptance of difference and otherness. For Arbus, photography was never a means of idealization but a medium of truthfulness—a counterpoint to the beauty standards she had once served as a fashion magazine photographer.
In 1956, Arbus took private lessons with Lisette Model, the grande dame of street photography, who taught that the more specific an image, the more universal its impact. Arbus took this lesson literally, photographing beauty queens, Boy Scouts, nudists, small-time criminals, fortune tellers, as well as dwarfs, transvestites, Siamese twins, muscle men, and others whom she described using the language of her era in her image titles. The exhibition's German translation updates some terminology for contemporary sensibilities, though sometimes with speculative results that can appear more like retrospective labeling than respectful updating.
Arbus's gaze was not pitying in Sontag's sense but curious. She photographed subjects not for their apparent differences but for the expressions on their faces and the dignity they possessed. She captured a young man not because of his hair curlers but because of the look in his eyes. She photographed dancing elderly couples with the same attention she gave to writer Jorge Luis Borges with his wife—images that speak of dignity rather than exploitation. Particularly moving are her final series featuring people with disabilities: photographs of touching but not condescending intimacy that convey joy in living beyond any external attribution.
Her portraits of famous personalities hold significant historical value, including Mae West, Jayne Mansfield, Marcel Duchamp, and Frank Stella, as well as a sleeping baby whose future as CNN anchor Anderson Cooper no one could have anticipated at the time. These images demonstrate Arbus's ability to capture both the famous and unknown with equal sensitivity and artistic vision.
Jenny Schlenzka, the relatively new director of the Gropius Bau, uses "Constellations" to reconnect with an institutional strength. During the era of her predecessor Gereon Sievernich, photography was a central pillar of the museum's programming, featuring major exhibitions of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Barbara Klemm, and revolutionary fashion photographer Martin Munkácsi. Diane Arbus was previously honored with a retrospective at the venue in 2012. Photography is set to regain prominence in the massive Berlin exhibition space, which now also houses artist studios.
This iteration features twice as many Arbus works, all originating from the photo laboratory of master printer Neil Selkirk, who studied under Arbus and was the only person authorized to create new prints from her estate after her death. Over three decades, Selkirk preserved one print of each photograph. These 454 images were acquired by Swiss collector Maja Hoffmann in 2011 and first displayed in her private Luma museum in Arles, southern France, in 2023.
In the Berlin Gropius Bau, through this deliberately non-hierarchical presentation by Luma curator Matthieu Humery, one quality emerges particularly clearly: Diane Arbus masterfully navigated the threshold between documentary and staged photography. Her images need not reveal all their secrets to maintain their profound impact. The exhibition "Diane Arbus: Constellations" runs through January 18, 2026, offering visitors an unprecedented opportunity to experience the full scope of one of photography's most compelling and controversial artists.
