Helmut Newton exhibition
Published at L'Officiel Italia on 8th January 2014
It has been almost ten years since one of the greatest photographers passed away in Los Angeles in January 2004. Yet Helmut Newton managed to stay present in all our minds through his inimitable pictures. His name is associated with beautiful women, often naked, sometimes tied up, always self-confident.
Shortly before his death the German photographer established the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin, in a partnership with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. In the summer of 2004, his foundation within the Museum for Photography opened its doors in a former military casino. Now his great retrospective, which had been shown at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2012, returns to his hometown Berlin. More than 200 photographs, in both black & white and colour from all major work series, can be seen in the exhibition “Helmut Newton: Paris-Berlin. Exhibition Grand Palais 2012”. It also presents numerous portraits, fashion photographs for magazines from the 1960s through the 1990s, nudes, as well as product shots. The curators are his former wife June Newton and Jérôme Neutres.
Helmut Newton met actress June Brunell in 1947 in Australia, when she posed as a model for him. Their wedding was one year later. He became an Australian citizen in 1946 after five years of serving the Australian army. In the mid-fifties the couple travelled through Europe and Newton got his first contract with Vogue in London. He quit after eleven months and they went to Paris and back to Melbourne where he got a contract with Australian Vogue. But the city, which would become their new home for two decades was Paris. Newton got a full-time position with French Vogue and contributed to French Elle, British Vogue and Queen. Additionally, he was not only successful in editorials but in commercials as well. In 1990 he was awarded the French “Grand Prix National de la Photographie” and later the “Das Große Verdienstkreuz” of Germany for his amazing work.
As Newton wanted to support other artists with his foundation, there is the accompanying exhibition “Men” by Greg Gorman. It presents a series of black & white male nudes that the American photographer selected together with June Newton and that were created between 1988 and 2012.
The exhibition “Helmut Newton: Paris-Berlin. Exhibition Grand Palais 2012 // Greg Gorman: Men” will be shown until May 18th 2014 at the Museum for Photography in Berlin.