Helmut Newton’s lens captured the essence of elegance and glamorous sexuality, showcasing the allure of women as never before. His images tell stories of desire, seduction, intrigue, and powerplay, leaving an indelible mark in our cultural history.
Eternal fashion icons and legendary celebrity portraits
Newton’s images straddle the knife-edge of ambiguity, teasing out allusions and social observations that both entice and challenge their viewers. In this portfolio, Newton’s unique perspective is effectively showcased, reflecting the complex undercurrents that give his images their distinct character across the breadth of his editorial work in the fields of fashion and portraiture.
This book reveals Newton’s evolution into a contrarian, a savvy and mischievous cynic, at once voyeur and satirist, whose lens framed contentious yet pivotal aspects of high fashion and high society in the latter decades of the twentieth century. He worked as a “gun for hire” while imposing his own perspectives and obsessions, defining most notably his idea of a powerful, self-assured woman. This figure became his most insistent theme, developed in erotically charged scenarios, most typically set in the seductive environment of opulent apartments or grand hotels, most notably in Paris, Monte Carlo, and Los Angeles.
Helmut Newton’s glamorous, ground-breaking, and boundary-pushing photographs have an indisputable signature authority that maintains their hold on our imaginations.
Helmut Newton
Hardcover, 14 x 19.5 cm, 0.43 kg, 192 pages