The black scaffolding modules dress the white walls of the room, drawing empty rectangles and embracing the shapes of the frames hanging from the structures. The colour combination of black and white within the exhibition space delicately dialogues with Diane Arbus’ photographs. With this harmonious composition, Matthieu Humery, curator of the exhibition Diane Arbus: Konstellationen, invites us to pause and reflect on the work of the US American photographer, presented at the Gropius Bau in Berlin until 18 January, 2026.
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Diane Arbus, a photographer born in New York in 1923, is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Her photographs transmit immediacy, they are often frontal, with the subject looking directly at the camera, and using flash. In her work, she questions conventional ideas of beauty by focusing on individuals marginalised within New York society. Among her most famous photographs we find Identical, Twins, Roselle, New Jersey (1967), A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, NYC (1966), and A Young Brooklyn Family Going for a Sunday Outing, NYC (1966). Her black-and-white work, characterised by high contrast and square format, has been exhibited at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Venice Biennale, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Jeu de Paume in Paris and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Now, it’s Berlin’s turn.
Diane Arbus: Konstellationen brings together over four hundred and fifty photographs, all of them printed by Neil Selkirk, a former student of the artist and the only authorised printer of her work after her death in 1971. Organised by Luma Arles in collaboration with Gropius Bau in Berlin, the exhibition delicately and elegantly presents the most complete collection of Diane Arbus’ photographic work.A constellation of portraits and everyday scenes that immerse visitors in post-war American life between 1950 and 1971, starring couples, children, drag artists, nudists, pedestrians, suburban families, circus performers, intellectuals, and celebrities such as Susan Sontag, Mae West, and James Brown.
The decision of the curator, Matthieu Humery, not to follow a chronological or thematic order in the spatial arrangement invites visitors to lose themselves in the exhibition. The visitor moves freely through the space, wanders, deviates, turns back, and stops. By projecting reflections of gallery details and fragments of parallel photographs, the mirrors on the back of each frame generate a sense of continuity across the exhibition narrative. The arrangement of the photograph, which at first may seem disordered, establishes an unexpected resonance in the reading of Diane Arbus’s work.
The exhibition Diane Arbus: Konstellationen is on view through January 18, 2026, at Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, Berlin.