HELMUT NEWTON WORK TV

Anna Wintour explains how Newton wrote to her after finishing a controversial shoot for Vogue, begging to be informed about any complaining letters.

He’s shown in the documentary naming the two concepts he detests: “art” and “good taste”. The key thing to remember is that Newton was never interested in approval for any of his choices. Rampling says the experience gave her “huge power” and the autonomy to “do what I want.” She had just starred in The Night Porter, and it seems likely the film’s exploration of perverse power dynamics (a former SS officer rekindles an affair with a Jewish woman he first encountered in a concentration camp) would have appealed to Newton. It was also the first time the actress felt comfortable enough to disrobe. It’s easy to feel as if Newton sprang from the womb fully-formed shooting naked women, but we learn from the film that his first nude portrait was Charlotte Rampling in 1974, when he was in his fifties. It’s easy to see how Riefenstahl’s monochrome, sculptural Olympians feed into the towering, cold beauty of Newton’s models. He was also unabashedly inspired by the work of Nazi sympathiser Leni Riefenstahl, who he photographed in her nineties, every facial line exposed. But he had begun to nurture an interest in photography when, two years prior, he worked as an assistant to the innovative Berlin photographer Yva (Else Ernestine Neuländer) – who was later murdered in the Majdanek concentration camp. Newton fled Nazi Germany in 1938 at the age of 18. The film’s director, Gero von Boehm, who befriended the photographer and shot footage with his permission, opted to make all his key interviewees women who had sat for his subject, including Isabella Rossellini, Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling and Newton’s formidable wife June (whose alter ego is the celebrated photographer Alice Springs). Newton died in 2004 aged 83, after crashing his car into a wall opposite his beloved Chateau Marmont hotel. Even the saddled woman – an infamous photo from 1976 – gazes from the frame with humorous malevolence, as if taunting the viewer with knowledge of their own tawdry fantasies. Newton’s women have an uber-vamp quality that emits strength, not vulnerability. Still, I told her that I see many things when I look at a Newton photograph, but certainly not a passive object. The photographer protests, “I love women!” and Sontag replies, “A lot of misogynistic men say that.

HELMUT NEWTON WORK TV

For instance, the film shows a clip from a French TV show in the 1970s, where Susan Sontag jousts with Newton over his work. Plenty of feminists loathed the work of the late photographer, who would have turned 100 at the weekend, and who’s celebrated in a new documentary, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful. “But he objectified women!” a younger colleague scolded me a couple of years ago. I knew the sort of photos she’d have in mind: pneumatic Bunny Girls, a model on all fours on a hotel bed with a Hermes saddle on her back, and a taxidermied crocodile with the buttocks and long legs of a woman protruding from its jaws.

'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Female friends are often surprised when I say I admire the work of Helmut Newton. Working and living in close companionship with his wife until his death at 83, his images remain as distinctive, seductive and orginal as ever. In 1996, he was appointed Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French Minister of Culture at the time. In 1990 he was awarded the Grand Prix national de la photographie in 1992 the German government awarded him Das Grosse Verdienstkreuz for services to German culture, and he was appointed Officier des Arts, Lettres et Sciences by S.A.S. Controversial scenarios, bold lighting, and striking compositions came to form his signature look. Newton preferred to shoot in streets or interiors, rather than studios. He first achieved international fame in the 1970's while working principally for French Vogue, and his celebrity and influence grew over the decades.

Born in Berlin, he arrived in Australia in 1940 and married June Brunell (a.k.a.

Helmut Newton (1920-2004) was one of the most influential photographers of all time.

Helmut newton work