"Some people`s photography is an art. Mine is not. If they happen to be exhibited in a gallery or a museum, that`s fine. But that`s not why I do them. I`m a gun for hire." - Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton, born shortly after World War I, is the photographer whom many people believe is the father of fashion photography. He was there at the start of fashion, and his images helped shape the way of the photographers who followed him. "Newton has always been very much more than a fashion photographer - he has fundamentally changed the terms of the fashion image. Take yves saint laurent's 'le smoking'. When, in 1966, saint laurent sent out a model in a man's suit, with the aim of freeing women from the trappings of feminine, frilly dresses, he caused an almighty scandal. His aesthetic was branded 'porno chic'. To radical feminists, Helmut Newton was the antichrist - his work outraged many and they protested one of his exhibits by throwing paint on his photos.
'in my vocabulary, ART is a dirty word,' he said,but it can be assumed that the spirit of Helmut Newton's work has sympathized with the movement of the surrealists. He portraited amazonian women who live, sleep and breathe in immaculate make-up, heavy jewellery and vicious stiletto heels, gorgeous women, expensive gowns, and exotic locations to create a unique imaginative world. His pictures are showing members from the margins of society engaged in fetish driven meetings with the social elite, surrounded by sumptuous hotels and ancient midnight streets, all of them saturated with decadence, luxury, and privilege. The magic of his art is its complete elusiveness, its cunning refusal to admit the true nature of its subject matter: the failure of reality and the triumph of desire. Helmut Newton published his first book 'White Women' in 1976, which featured the most radical selections from this period.
Newton reintroduce elements of violence (or the implied threat of danger) by featuring semi-nude, highly germanic, intensely voluptuous models photographed from the rear holding pistols
discreetly hidden from their beaus behind their backs. Knives or other instruments of carnage are held in reserve by delicious femmes fatales for moments of ostensible tenderness - and blindly trusting intimacy - with unsuspecting men ripe for the kill. Newton was inspired by novels of chandler and spillane, of which he was a great admirer. Men in his photos typically appeared in servile roles, as waiters, chauffeurs or mere onlookers. The familiar backdrops of europe's grandest hotels, hollywood apartments, and riviera swimming pools are the settings for a series of mysterious dramas, whose sources are never exposed and whose conflicts are never resolved."

(All above paragraphs were taken from website: here ).

Before he was Helmut Newton, his birth name was Helmut Neustadter. Born in Berlin to an American mother and a Jewish father. Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgynnasium and the American School in Berlin. He was interested in photography at the early age of 12, when he purchased his first camera. He worked for the German photographer Yva (Elsie Neulander Simon) during 1936. However, with the continually oppressive restrictions placed on the Jews, his father lost control of the family’s button factory and they were briefly in a concentration camp. This finally compelled the family to leave Germany in 1938, where they fled to South America. Newton went onto towards China when he was given a passport at 18 and left for Singapore where he began his career as a portrait photographer. There, he interned with British authorities and was taken to Australia. After gaining Australian citizenship he changed his name to Newton.

Newton established his own studio where he worked on fashion and theatre photography with his wife, another photographer named June. He established a fantastic reputation that resulted in a feature for British Vogue about Australia. In 1957 he received a 12 month contract with Vogue and left for Britain. Before completing the contract he left for Paris where he carried on working as a fashion photographer, shooting for a variety of magazines such as French Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
Newton is known for his erotic, stylized images working often with nude women with fetishistic undertones. While his work was controversial, he would always portray women with a sense of power. A heart attack in 1970 slowed Newton’s output, but his notoriety continued to increase, most notably in 1980 with his “Big Nude” series, which marked the pinnacle of his erotic-urban style, underpinned with excellent technical skills. Newton also worked in portraiture and more fantastical studies. He shot a number of pictorials for Playboy, including pictorials of Nastassia Kinski and Kristine DeBell. Original prints of the photographs from his August 1976 pictorial of DeBell, “200 Motels, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation” were sold at auctions concerning Playboy archives in 2002 for 21,075 and in 2003 for 26,290. Newton worked during the nineties photographing at the height of the supermodel era photographing models such as Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer. His images were so much more than simple photographs, always including some type of narrative with his work.
“During the documentary, "Helmut By June", in which his wife records an intimate look at the man and his work, Helmut comes to the screen holding up his modern electronic camera and proclaims, "Everything is automatic! All I have to do is push the button. It's the camera that every amateur buys!". He then pauses, before pointing to his head and saying "It's all in there!". It's this idea that I think is lacking from so many photographers today. Sure it's important to know how your tools work, and how to get the best from them in any given situation, but essentially, all you need the camera to do is expose the image correctly. That's a technical thing. The creativity and art comes from pointing it in the right direction, making sure that what's in front of the camera is right. It's not about f stops and ISO's. It's about people, stories, and the ability to show people what it is that you see!”
Newton died at 83 in 2004 thanks to a car crash at his home in Southern California. He is buried in Berlin.

Labels: fashion photography, Helmut Newton