Following the completion of an elaborate extension and renovation work in 2019/2020, the renowned exhibition space CHAUSSEE 36 in the heart of Berlin-Mitte will re-launch with two top-class exhibitions – which could not be more different. The group exhibition Behind Desire takes a critical look at the notion of eroticism shaped by patriarchy. Thematically, it follows the spring 2019 exhibition, Women on View – Aesthetics of Desire in Advertising, in which CHAUSSEE 36 critically examined the eroticization of women’s bodies in advertising. Behind Desire marks the start of the exhibition series EROS & PHOTOGRAPHY and introduces the multifaceted, complex, and powerful implications of eroticism. The exhibition not only aims to foster a comprehensive understanding of eroticism through an aesthetic investigation of the topic, but also to enable visitors to confront their own Eros, looking beyond gender and sexual orientation. In a world in which sex is available with a swipe of a finger and pornography has become omnipresent – what is the significance of eroticism? The group exhibition Behind Desire – with works by Nobuyoshi Araki, Gilles Berquet, Lucien Clergue, Daidō Moriyama, Herb Ritts, Jeanloup Sieff, Evangeline, Eva Ionesco, and Ellen von Unwerth, as well as Renaud de Gambs, Thomas Hodges, and Gérard Musy, among others – introduces the various facets of eroticism and examines the mechanisms of desire in fine art photography. For the first time, works will be shown from the Collection de Gambs, which specializes in nudes and erotic photography. Also premiering is the series Les Confessions by New York-based photographer Laurent Elie Badessi, who has researched the city’s BDSM scene in depth.

Greg Gorman is a legend. He belongs to a very small group of iconic Hollywood photographers, who, like George Hurrell in his time, is a master of light and wields his magic to produce stunning and memorable images. During the past fifty years, Gorman has created an impressive and distinctive body of portrait photography. Those photographic works will now be published in a comprehensive retrospective monograph, titled “It’s Not About Me”, by teNeues. With more than 400 pages, the book features Gorman’s most iconic portraits such as Andy Warhol from the L.A. Eyeworks campaign, various shots of his long-time friends David Bowie and Grace Jones, a young Jerry Hall, and images from some of his most famous movie campaigns such as “Tootsie” with Dustin Hoffmann, “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Cry Baby” with Johnny Depp, and “Scarface” with Al Pacino. It also includes numerous color as well as black & white portraits of Hollywood idols which have never been published before. From Kirk Douglas, Eartha Kitt, Robert Redford, Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, and Al Pacino to Viggo Mortensen, Diane Lane, Iggy Pop, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, and Liza Minnelli, as well as Mark Wahlberg, Halle Berry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sharon Stone, Michael Jackson, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro and Marina Abramović – to name just a few.

On 8 October 2020, the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin will open its new exhibition “America 1970s/80s” with works by Evelyn Hofer, Sheila Metzner, Joel Meyerowitz, and Helmut Newton. After taking a full-time position with the French edition of Vogue in 1961, Helmut Newton worked in parallel for the fashion magazine’s American edition as well. During this time, he produced images in both Europe and the USA. In New York, Newton delivered his photographs directly to Alexander Liberman, who was the editorial director of American Vogue from the 1960s to the 1990s – not to mention a successful painter, sculptor, and photographer himself. Newton liked the United States and the sense of freedom it offered, and he regularly commuted between the Old and New Worlds. In the 1970s, most of Newton’s American fashion and nude photographs were shot in New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Los Angeles for various magazines; Newton included some of these in his second photography book, Sleepless Nights (1978). After 1980, when Helmut and June Newton began traveling regularly to Los Angeles to spend the winter months at Chateau Marmont, he made numerous portraits of the “famous and infamous” in and around Hollywood for magazines such as Egoïste, Interview, Vanity Fair, and New Yorker, as well as some nudes for Playboy. The images presented in this exhibition clearly show how Newton’s pictorial language changed during his time in the USA and that portraiture became increasingly important for him...