Berliners Get a Crash Course in Glittery Celebrity Culture (Exhibit)
BERLIN — Aside from Romy Schneider hanging out naked on the Riviera and an aged Marlene Dietrich hiding her face from a nosy photographer on an airplane, the most prominent German in a hugely diverting paparazzi show at the Helmut Newton Foundation here through mid-November is Albert Einstein.
He’s now surrounded by the Sean Penns and Brigitte Bardots of the world, looking as out of place as he must have felt when he arrived in New Jersey in 1933. In a picture from three years earlier, in which he’s chatting in white tie with a dour bunch of British diplomats, he wears that famous animated wide-eyed expression suggesting he is kind of amused to find himself in this circumstance, too.
Actually, though, he’s the ultimate German celebrity. Germany has long been funny about its relationship to local stardom and to the very notion of celebrity, which makes this exhibition a particularly fascinating and revealing exercise.
With some 350 pictures it’s a breezy affair, not too logical, but never mind.
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He’s now surrounded by the Sean Penns and Brigitte Bardots of the world, looking as out of place as he must have felt when he arrived in New Jersey in 1933. In a picture from three years earlier, in which he’s chatting in white tie with a dour bunch of British diplomats, he wears that famous animated wide-eyed expression suggesting he is kind of amused to find himself in this circumstance, too.
Actually, though, he’s the ultimate German celebrity. Germany has long been funny about its relationship to local stardom and to the very notion of celebrity, which makes this exhibition a particularly fascinating and revealing exercise.
With some 350 pictures it’s a breezy affair, not too logical, but never mind.