Helmut Newton (Berlin, Germany, 1920 – West Hollywood, USA, 2004).
He is held as one of the great masters of late Twentieth-Century photography, whose photographic style is still seen as provocative and widely capable of challenging the comprehension of female desire and sexuality. Born Helmut Neustädter in Berlin to a Jewish family, after being an apprentice of Yva, he left the country in 1938. After being in Singapore and Australia, where he met his wife and lifetime companion June, he changed his name to Helmut Newton in 1946. Returned to Europe only in the Sixties, where he started a successful fashion photographer career in Paris in 1961. As a fashion photographer, he contributed to leading magazines such as French Vogue, Harper Bazaar, Playboy, Elle Queen, GQ, and Marie-Claire. Newton became an iconic fashion photographer recognized for his radical, edgy, and, at times, racy subject matter.
During his career, he has worked for Chanel, Gianni Versace, and Yves Saint Laurent. He has photographed many personalities from the entertainment, culture, politics, and cinema sectors, such as Ava Gardner, Charlotte Rampling, Catherine Deneuve, Romy Schneider, Raquel Welch, Sigourney Weaver, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders.
Inspired by film noir, Expressionist cinema, S&M, and surrealism, Newton’s images are controversial, provocative, and heavily voyeuristic. Newton preferred to work outside the studio and searched for the elaborate decor of turn-of-the-century mansions, elegant villas, or distinguished hotels to stage his models. Newton pushed the boundaries of the fashion industry with his erotically charged, often menacing imagery. Feminists criticized Newton as overly suggestive and unnecessarily risqué.
Like Norman Parkinson, Richard Avedon, and Irving Penn, Newton became one of the most influential and talented photographers shooting for Vogue. He published several books of his work, such as White Women (1976), Big Nudes(1981), and World Without Men (1984): thanks to the contribution of his wife, June, he pushed through the boundaries of his vision, in which the female nude is a tool to highlight sex as a symbol of strength and power.
Honored in 1996 with the title Grand Commander of the Arts and Letters by the French minister of culture, Helmut Newton died at 83 in 2004 following a heart attack. His style, described by Anna Wintour as “synonymous with Vogue at its most glamorous and mythic,” continues to influence present and future generations of contemporary fashion and portrait photographers.
