![]() It’s not explicitly in this documentary, but perhaps something worth asking after watching a film about an artist who experienced fascism first-hand. Would his work, or any work that walks the line the way his does, be tolerated today? The late Susan Sontag challenged him on TV about his assertion that he loved women, suggesting that loving women and being a misogynist were not incompatible.īut perhaps the most intriguing point of view comes from Vogue’s formidable driving force Wintour, who hired him frequently in spite of the controversies. She describes his work as “necessary,” even if it “sometimes upsets people,” and celebrates the role his tough images had in a magazine devoted to beautiful images. She also intriguingly muses about whether his fashion images that veered into S&M were also him expressing anger at women. ![]() Isabella Rossellini said you had to understand he wasn’t photographing you, but rather an idea, “So you have to make yourself available, or say no.” ![]() “He was a little bit pervert, but it’s okay, so was I.” Singer Grace Jones who saw his work outré, but never vulgar. To get a perspective on the work, Von Boehm turned to some of the models Newton worked with most frequently, including Grace Jones, Nadja Auerman, Charlotte Rampling, Claudia Schiffer, Hanna Schygulla and Isabella Rossellini.Ī few of them had never posed in the nude before and trusted him, seeing him as a story teller. In another assignment for French Vogue he shoots images of expensive jewelry on the hands of a woman cutting up chickens.īut the bulk of the film deals with his fashion work, and the way he portrayed women. When asked to photograph Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French extreme right wing National Front, he photographs him with his dogs, in a shot that echoes a picture of Adolf Hitler. The film portrays the artist as a man with a singular vision, and with a sense of mischief and humour, especially when it came to politics. Among other honors, Newton received the German Kodak Award for Photographic Books, a Life Legend Award from Life magazine, and an award from the American Institute for Graphic Arts for his photographs.He ultimately landed in Australia, where he met June and began doing commercial and fashion photography, and from there ended up launching his fashion career. In 2003, he died in a car crash in Los Angeles, at 84 years old. He continued to travel later in life, dividing his time between his homes in Monte Carlo and Los Angeles. In Paris he began working for French Vogue, and later Playboy, Elle, and other publications during the 1950s and 1960s as his reputation grew, traveling frequently throughout the world on assignments. He later opened up a photography studio, and moved to Europe in the 1950s. He fled increasing Nazi oppression in Germany in 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht, and worked in Singapore and Australia during World War II, serving in the Australian army for several years. It is reputed that Newton first became enamored with the female nude as a photographic subject as a teenager, while working as an apprentice to theater photographer Yva in Berlin. He increasingly focused more on these images rather than fashion photography emphasizing the aggressive and incendiary in his works.īorn to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1920, Newton received his first camera at 12 years old, often neglecting his studies in school to pursue photography. editor-in-chief Anna Wintour once described his work as “synonymous with Vogue at its most glamorous and mythic.” Known for the dramatic lighting and the unconventional poses of his models in his photographs, Newton’s work has been characterized as obsessive and subversive, incorporating themes of sadomasochism, prostitution, violence, and a persistently-overt sexuality into the narratives of his images. Newton is considered to have imbued fashion photography with narrative depth, giving context to his subjects by creating stylized, dreamlike scenes. “If a photographer says he is not a voyeur, he is an idiot,” he once said. Photographer Helmut Newton is most famous for his work as a fashion photographer, frequently creating work for Vogue magazine, and for his provocative, studied photographs of nudes.
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