HERBERT TOBIAS – PORTRAITS

On the occasion of the exhibition Leather and S&M Underground by Robert Mapplethorpe, we bring his work into dialogue with that of the German photographer Herbert Tobias (1924–1982). A gay photographer and the author of a queer black-and-white body of work predating Mapplethorpe’s, Tobias engages in a sensitive and profound exchange around the body and identity. Shaped by the material and moral ruins of the post-war period, his work reveals constrained and marginalised bodies and subjectivities, but also ones in the process of reconstruction, at a time when it was necessary to reinvent one’s place in the world and assert one’s existence within a context of extreme fragility.
 
ALONGSIDE THE EXHIBITION
 

// Photo Brussels Festival — January 22 to February 22, 2026
// Late opening — Friday, January 23, until 9 p.m.
// Conversation on the work of Robert Mapplethorpe with Xavier Canonne, Director of the Musée de la Photographie de Charleroi, and Eric Mouchet — Wednesday, February 11, 6 p.m.

// Portraits (22.01-14.03.2026) | Brussels