This installation view shows photographic works by the Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki. Nine smaller formats in rows of three hang on the left wall, consisting of black and white photographs of frivolous Japanese girls in school uniforms. To the right is a large-format black-and-white photograph of a tied up woman with her upper body exposed. On the right wall is again a large-format black-and-white photograph of a young woman whose head and neck peek out of a bedspread. Next to it hang color photographs of partial views of naked women, whose intimate parts have been scratched away with a sharp object.

Sammlung Goetz

Nobuyoshi Araki – Diane Arbus – Nan Goldin

March 24 – September 26, 1997

"A photograph is the secret of a secret. The more they communicate, the less one knows." (Diane Arbus)

With the exhibition Nobuyoshi Araki – Diane Arbus – Nan Goldin, Sammlung Goetz presents three photographers from three generations and cultural worlds. Regardless of societal taboos, they show life as it actually is. Despite their unsparing gaze, the subjects of their photographs maintain their dignity. These photos reveal intimate, touching moments of human interaction.

Diane Arbus is the oldest artist whose works are included in the show. She became known for her black and white portraits from those on the edges of society: the mentally disabled, the poor, prostitutes and transvestites. Nobuyoshi Araki is one of the most renowned Japanese photographers. His nude photos of schoolgirls and artistically bound models triggered great discussion about the boundaries between pornography and art. In her photographs, Nan Goldin takes up subjects like violence, sexuality and death. She uses her camera to accompany people who belong to her circle of friends often for years at a time, almost like a diary.

Nobuyoshi Araki – Diane Arbus – Nan Goldin

132 pages, 134 ill., softcover
German/English
1997, Kunstverlag Ingvild Goetz GmbH, Hamburg
ISBN 3-9805267-12

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Cyrill Lachauer. The Sunset Route

June 20 – September 27, 2026 | Kunstpalais Erlangen

feat. Mike Brodie, Mouse Green, Rhyw, Mia Justice Smith, Moritz Stumm

In the exhibition The Sunset Route, on view at the Kunstpalais Erlangen and created in collaboration with the Sammlung Goetz, Cyrill Lachauer presents works from 2020 to 2025, a period during which he traveled on freight trains through the USA, Mexico, and Bosnia. In the spirit of poetic ethnography, he created photographs and films that are now being shown together for the first time. They all explore questions of freedom, self-determination, and resistance, as well as colonization, exclusion, and exploitation.

Laurie Simmons. Dollhouse Photographs

June 25 – August 30, 2026 | Deutsches Theatermuseum

The American artist Laurie Simmons is known for her photographs featuring tiny dolls representing stereotypical female roles in domestic interiors. Her series In and Around the House (1978/79) is exemplary for this set-up photography. The series is the centerpiece of the exhibition, with 56 black-and-white images showing a doll occupied with the mundane chores of a housewife in the cozy environment of a dollhouse. The exhibition “Laurie Simmons: Dollhouse Photographs”, a collaboration of Sammlung Goetz, Deutsches Theatermuseum and FILMFEST MÜNCHEN, presents a selection of works by Simmons that cast a critical gaze at gender stereotypes in the American middle class.

Sterling Ruby

July 16 – October 24, 2026 | Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster

Los Angeles-based American artist Sterling Ruby is known for his cross-genre work, which ranges from ceramics and bronzes, collages and textiles, to enormous, spray-painted paintings. In his works, Ruby weaves together a variety of different autobiographical, art-historical, and sociological sources. Through deconstruction and reconstruction, he probes the idea of a non-hierarchical and borderless universe. The exhibition at the Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster provides insight into his multi-layered artistic practice.

Jeff Wall

November 17, 2026 – February 20, 2027 | Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster

Canadian artist Jeff Wall is one of the most influential photographers of our time. In his elaborately staged pictorial compositions, he combines the narrative of cinema with painting. Wall became known for his large-format lightbox images, which are formally more reminiscent of the world of advertising than that of fine art. With this technique, he revolutionized the medium of photography, elevating it to the height of painting and sculpture. The exhibition at the Sammlung Goetz /Schaufenster presents a selection of his iconic lightbox images from the 1990s.