Helmut Newton was quoted regarding a persistent and adoring fan that pleaded to do anything to have her photo taken in a French cafe.
Helmut Newton (1920 — 2004)
Helmut Newton died last weekend in Los Angeles. He was considered by many to be one of the top photographers of the 20th Century. Newton was synonymous with his contribution through photography to the great western motif of the Nude. He was a long time star photographer for Vogue Magazine through his ice cold fashion photography. I can’t imagine the 1980s without him. And his contribution to our visual world via fashion, commercial photography and art has been extraordinary.
“Anyone who would dress up in drag or photograph himself nude in recovery from heart surgery is a friend of mine.” — Eric Kroll
His work has long been a sort of Maginot Line between the sensualist and sexist camps for female imagery. It saddens me as he was one of the strongest proponents of the Female Nude and Feminism.
From a brilliant bio by JG Ballard
“I will only say that critics who tremble so fiercely at the thought of the voyeuristic male gaze miss the point that distance generates mystery and enchantment, and expresses the awe with which the male imagination regards all women, as we see so clearly in Newton’s photographs. Far from debasing his models (most of whom are not naked), Newton places them at the heart of a deep and complex drama where they rule like errant queens, blissfully indifferent to the few men who dare to approach them.”
We are now on the eve of the month for amour fou. It is an unfortunate coincidence to take this time to remember such a masterful commercial artist and unashamed hedonist.
The Washington Post’s obit offers, “Technically, his work was always glossy, pretty, perfect. But his subject matter was often raw, disconcerting and unnerving. He explored the darker side of sexuality — the place where pleasure, pain, joy and anger all converge. Newton reveled in nudity — not the soft and sensual curves of the body, but the hard angles and planes of it. His models would not be turned shyly away from a camera and their bodies would not be romanticized into something abstract and dreamy. Instead, breasts, torsos, legs and buttocks were defiantly on display.”
Additional Newton images can be seen at
“Nothing has been retouched, nothing electronically altered. I photographed what I saw.” - Helmut Newton
It just stuck me that Newton's aesthetic sensiblities provide a neat shorthand for the fee-wheeling Weimar Berlin of the '20s and early '30s. Along with Ellen Von Unwerth. The current, soon-to-close, revival of Cabaret owes a big debt to his aesthetic. As does Chicago.
On Jan.30.2004 at 01:11 PM