Helmut Newton is a classic of 20th-century photography. His black-and-white photographs were published in the most famous magazines. Newton collaborated with Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Queen, Playboy, and for several decades photographed for various editions of Vogue. The works of this master are distinguished by a special style in which the absence of color contrasts with pronounced artistic-erotic scenes.
Newton's main passion and subject of photographic art were always women, but men also often came into the lens of his camera. He was posed for by actors and musicians: Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Sting, Serge Gainsbourg, the British soul group Sade, as well as Madonna, Catherine Deneuve, Sophia Loren, and others.
The main part of the exhibition 'Helmut Newton/Alice Springs: Us and Them' consists of photographs from the series of the same name. 'Us and Them' is a joint work by Newton and Springs, conceived as an exhibition and at the same time a book project. It is a kind of photo diary of the couple, in which, interspersed with their own portraits and self-portraits, pictures of celebrities from the 1980s-1990s are shown. Each fragment of the series is a small story. In one photograph, the protagonists appear in a private setting, in another, as public figures. The contrast of the photographic images in each case creates a special emotional effect.
The second part of the exhibition, the series 'Sex and Landscapes,' combines large-format natural landscapes and nude photographs created from 1974 to 2001.
Newton's photographs of women were often criticized by feminists. The most famous incident happened in 1993, when the founder of the magazine Emma, Alice Schwarzer, published an article in which she called the photographer's works sexist, racist, and even fascist. Such accusations are nonsense, given that Newton, as a Jew, was persecuted by fascists in the 1930s, who forbade him to work in his profession, and was forced to flee Germany in 1938. But Alice Schwarzer was not bothered by this. She was so outraged by Newton's explicit photographs that she completely forgot about copyright and illustrated her article with 19 of his photographs without asking the artist's permission. The court considered that 19 was too many for a quotation in a political dispute (as Schwarzer insisted) and more like an attempt to promote herself at someone else's expense. Schwarzer had to pay the full amount for the photographs she hated plus compensation for moral damages.
But let's return to Newton. As already mentioned, he himself selected the series 'Us and Them' and 'Sex and Landscapes' for the first exhibition of the Museum of Photography. But unfortunately, Newton did not get to see the opening of the capital's largest repository of photographic art on June 3, 2004. About four months before that date, he was in a car accident in Los Angeles that took the life of the 83-year-old artist. The urn with his ashes was buried in the cemetery on Stubenrauchstraße in the Berlin district of Friedenau, where the remains of many famous German personalities rest, including Marlene Dietrich.
The exhibition 'Helmut Newton/Alice Springs: Us and Them' can be seen until November 16 at: Museum für Fotografie, Jebensstraße 2 (Charlottenburg).
Tue, Wed, Fri 10:00–18:00;
Thu 10:00–20:00;
Sat, Sun 11:00–18:00
Admission €10 (€5).
Faina ARTS,
'Russkaya Germaniya'.