Karlheinz Weinberger, "Intimate Stranger"

This is the first institutional retrospective of Weinberger (1921–2006), a self-taught photographer who labored mostly in obscurity until being "discovered" in the 1990s by fashion photogs such as Steven Meisel. Weinberger started out doing gay beefcake for porn magazines, until discovering his true subject in the early 1960s: a group of alienated Zurich teenagers whose obsession with Elvis Presley, James Dean, denim and other staples of American pop culture developed into a florid subculture known as the halbstark, or “half strong.” More than just fodder for his lens, however, the halbstark were invited into Weinberger's life, to hang out at his house. The result: intimate portraits that are as specific to a certain era and place as they are timeless.