Walking into Enjoy Your Life!, the latest Juergen Teller exhibit in Berlin, the first thing you see is a larger-than-life-size print of the German photographer’s mother in an unassuming wood-paneled home. She seems unprepared for the snapshot, with her eyes looking just beyond the camera, while holding a door sign with her son’s name on it.

The rawness in this personal image is the same kind seen in Teller’s commercial photography for brands including Céline, Helmut Lang and Marc Jacobs as well as in his candid portraits of Charlotte Rampling, Lupita Nyong’o and Kurt Cobain, among others. His signature is an honest and overexposed way of shooting, which is antithetical to the glossy, overly styled aesthetic of fashion magazines. Ironically, it’s made him one of the most sought-...