Diane Arbus: Konstellationen

About the Exhibition

Widely regarded as one of the most original and influential artists of the 20th century, Diane Arbus’ bold black-and-white photographs demolish aesthetic conventions and upend all certainties. With Diane Arbus: Konstellationen, Gropius Bau presents the most comprehensive exhibition of her work to date. Following a highly acclaimed debut at LUMA Arles and a stop in Arbus’ hometown of New York City at the Park Avenue Armory, the show will be on view in Berlin from 16 October 2025.

Featuring 454 prints, many of them shown here for the first time, Konstellationen offers new perspectives on Arbus’ iconic images and the wide range of her portraiture. The presentation invites viewers to navigate their way through a labyrinthine architecture of black scaffolding, discovering unexpected connections between the works.

“[Photographs] are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back, they’ll still be there looking at you.” — Diane Arbus

Occupying the first floor of Gropius Bau, Konstellationen reaffirms the institution’s history of significant photography exhibitions, including Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Barbara Klemm, Herlinde Koelbl, Dayanita Singh and Zanele Muholi. It also brings things full circle: Arbus’ first solo show in Berlin was on view at Gropius Bau nearly 15 years ago, in 2012.

“We are thrilled to welcome Diane Arbus’ iconic works back to Berlin, almost 15 years after her comprehensive solo exhibition at Gropius Bau and now comprising more than twice as many photographs. Her groundbreaking work paved the way for photography to be recognised as an art form worthy of exhibitions in major art institutions and has influenced generations of makers in the field. It is a great pleasure to make her fascinating pictures accessible to a local and international audience.” — Jenny Schlenzka, Director of Gropius Bau

Diane Arbus spent much of her career, which spanned from the late 1950s to 1971, photographing in New York City, which has created a diverse and compelling portrait of life in the postwar United States. Her subjects included couples, children, drag performers, nudists, New York City pedestrians, suburban families, circus performers, intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and celebrities including Mae West and James Brown. After abandoning the 35mm format around 1962, Arbus began using a waist-level medium-format camera that allowed her to keep eye contact and engage directly with her subjects.

“If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.” — Diane Arbus

It was only after Arbus’ death in 1971 that Neil Selkirk – one of her former students and the only person authorised to print from her original negatives – began printing from them for the Arbus Estate. For the first time, this exhibition brings together all of the 454 prints produced by Selkirk, marking the most extensive and complete showing of the artist’s works to date. Presented as a labyrinthine “constellation” of photographs, the exhibition at Gropius Bau follows neither chronological nor thematic grouping. Instead, it invites visitors to wander freely among the images, discovering the resonances and relationships that emerge between them.

Among these works on display is A box of ten photographs, presented together as a complete set. In 1969, Arbus began to work on this portfolio. It includes such iconic works as Identical twins, Roselle, N.J., 1967; A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, N.Y.C.,1966 and Boy with a straw hat waiting to march in a pro-war parade, N.Y.C., 1967. Before her death, she completed the printing for eight known sets of A box of ten photographs and sold four of them – to photographer Richard Avedon (who acquired two sets), artist Jasper Johns and Bea Feitler, then art director at Harper’s Bazaar. This portfolio laid the foundation for Arbus’ posthumous career and the broader recognition of photography as a “serious” art form: she was the first photographer to be included in the Venice Biennale and to be featured in Artforum and on its cover.

About Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus was born in 1923 in New York City. She studied photography with Berenice Abbott, Alexey Brodovitch and Lisette Model and her first published photographs appeared in Esquire in 1960. In 1963 and 1966, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and was one of three photographers whose work was the focus of New Documents, John Szarkowski’s landmark 1967 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

A year after her death in 1971, her work was selected for inclusion in the Venice Biennale – the first time a photographer had ever been so honoured. In 1972, her work was celebrated in her first posthumous retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. In the ensuing fifty years, major travelling museum retrospectives of her work have been mounted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2003), the Jeu de Paume, Paris (2011), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2016), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (2018) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (2020). In addition, significant collections of her work can be found in numerous institutions throughout the world, such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France; Centre Pompidou; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Books devoted to her work include: Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph (1972), Magazine Work (1984), Untitled (1995), Revelations (2003), The Libraries (2004), A Chronology (2011), Silent Dialogues (2015), In the Beginning (2016), A box of ten photographs (2018), and Documents (2022).

Diane Arbus: Konstellationen is organised by LUMA Arles in collaboration with Gropius Bau, Berlin. The exhibition is curated by Matthieu Humery, Curator at Large, LUMA Arles. Exhibition Management Gropius Bau: Lisa Tietze, Project Management