The US-American author and critic Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was a “public intellectual”: a figure who sparked controversial debates through her writings and her nonconformist demeanor, and who engaged with them head-on.

Her life as a dissident unfolded as if in fast motion. In the early 1950s, she became one of the youngest university lecturers in the U.S. After an early marriage and motherhood, she did not—as was customary at the time—withdraw from social life, but instead became politically active, had bisexual relationships, got divorced, and worked as a freelance writer while raising her child as a single mother. Her intellectual work and her irrepressible passion for thinking were always original. Early on, she engaged with photography and film, analyzing artistic genres not yet established at the time, such as happenings, science fiction, underground film, and pornography. In her “Notes on Camp” (1964), she described queer techniques for appropriating the cultural mainstream. With remarkable foresight, she recognized the defining influence of photography in our media-driven society. As a passionate cineaste who also directed films herself, Sontag saw film as “the most vivid, exciting, and significant of all art forms.”

In photographs and descriptions, Susan Sontag herself comes across as a movie star. Iconic photos of her hung on the walls of many lesbian-feminist shared apartments. Susan Sontag was a flamboyant, free-spirited, sometimes difficult, and contradictory role model. She lived a life of autonomy that would have been unimaginable to previous generations.

Susan Sontag struggled with identity labels throughout her life. She came into contact with the queer scene early on, but never came out. When, in the late 1980s, she witnessed the social exclusion of people with AIDS—including within her own circle of friends—she wrote “AIDS and Its Metaphors” (1989), an important text addressing issues of stigmatization, personal responsibility, activism, and solidarity. Her perspective, however, drew less on her own queerness than on her experiences with cancer.

What does Susan Sontag mean to us today? What is her significance in queer cultural history? How do we remember her many appearances in Berlin, a city she visited frequently and for extended periods?

The Schwules Museum is taking over the successful exhibition “Susan Sontag: Seeing and Being Seen” from the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2025) and expanding it. A new section will explore Susan Sontag’s traces in Berlin—featuring recollections from contemporaries such as Ulrike Ottinger, Gesine Strempel, Erika and Ulrich Gregor, and Carolin Emcke. Another section is dedicated to the influence of Sontag’s thinking on queer culture. Central to “Susan Sontag – Seeing and Being Seen” are reflections on visibility, self-presentation, and representation. They demonstrate the acute sensitivity to all forms of discrimination and exclusion that Susan Sontag possessed as a queer Jewish woman.

“Susan Sontag’s work can be read without considering queerness as a backdrop. But it makes much more sense to read it with queerness in mind. And when you look at how strongly Susan Sontag’s work—and her diaries as well—constantly strive to expand the vocabulary, to find more precise terms, to use words to make sense of the world—then you naturally see someone who is searching for a way to articulate what has been tabooed or silenced.” (Carolin Emcke in a video interview that is part of the exhibition)

Curated by Dr. Kristina Jaspers and Dr. Birgit Bosold

Featuring works by: Susan Sontag, Jack Smith, Annie Leibovitz, Peter Hujar, August Sander, Ingmar Bergman, The Supremes, and others

New Videointerviews with Ulrike Ottinger, Erika and Ulrich Gregor, Gesine Strempel, Carolin Emcke, Klaus Biesenbach, Joachim Sartorius and Joan Nestle

The exhibition is a reprise and expansion of the exhibition of the same name at the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (March 14–September 28, 2025).

Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt

Photography: Renate von Mangoldt (Susan Sontag during the event “Three Americans in Berlin,” Academy of Arts, Berlin, September 1976), (c) von Mangoldt