PHOTO:Helmut Newton
On the occasion the end of the exhibition “Helmut Newton: Permanent Loan Selection”, with 200 photos of Helmut Newton at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, for the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Helmut Newton Foundation, we make a tribute to the photographer who changed the fashion photography in 1961, the moment that he photographed a model of Yves Saint Laurent, wearing a man’s costume in the streets of Paris at night.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Helmut Newton Foundation Archive
He was born 31/10/20 in Berlin and he passed away in Hollywood in 2004 because of an heart attack in his new car in the age of 84. He attended the Werner Von Trotschke Gymnasium and the American School. He was interested in photography from the age of 12 and he worked with the popular fashion and portrait photographer Elsie Simon, known as Yva, form 1936. Because of the race laws he left Germany in 1938 and he took refuge in Singapore where he worked as photographer for the Straits Times. In 1948 he married the Australian actress June Browne, known as Alice Springs. After the war he became a freelance fashion photographer. He moved to Paris in 1961. His images were published in a lot of magazines: Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, GQ, Vanity Fair and Marie Claire. Newton has always been very much more than a fashion photographer, he has fundamentally changed the terms of the fashion image. His aesthetic was branded ‘porno chic’. To radical feminists, Helmut Newton was the antichrist, his work outraged many and they protested one of his exhibits by throwing paint on his photos. “In my vocabulary, ART is a dirty word”, he said, but it can be assumed that the spirit of Helmut Newton’s work has sympathised with the movement of the surrealists, while Sousan Soltang argues that his iconography derives from the celebrations of the Nazis. He portraited amazonian women who live, sleep and breathe in immaculate make-up, heavy jewellery and stiletto heels, gorgeous women, expensive gowns, and exotic locations, to create a unique imaginative world, in luxurious villas or near windows in the magic of the metropolis. He adored luxury and wealth and reflected it in all its work. But he was the first to alter the woman from a standard eroticism in a sexual object and photographed her, with an insatiable hunger to end… Newton uses elements of disguised sexual violence and eroticism, arousing male fantasy to the fullest, since he knows very well to handle gameof the image and to balance exactly on the boundary. Intensely sensual shapely bodies, with darkened look, well-painted lips intensely, full of passion and mystery displayed in the foreground, mostly in black and white, with all kinds of sexually lethal weapons that stir every man’s mind, creating desires… wet dreams and fantasies…
Info: “Helmut Newton: Permanent Loan Selection”, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Jebensstraße 2, Berlin, Days & Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri: 10:00-18:00, Thu: 10:00-20:00, Sat, Sun: 11:00-18:00, www.smb.museum
