Helmut Newton, a German-Jewish/Australian fashion photographer, is best known for his fashion and female nude studies. Born Helmut Neustadter in Berlin, Germany on Oct. 31, 1920, Newton attended both German and American schools. Newton's proclivity for the unusual, particularly in sexual contexts, is attributed to his early years, when his older brother showed him the "red light" (prostitute) district of Berlin. This early exposure would later lead him to create photographic studies that altered the course of fashion photography.
In 1936, Newton left a floundering school career to apprentice under German photographer Else Neulander Simon (known professionally as Yva). Under political pressure, Else, also a Jew, was forced to close her studio, and in 1938, Newton himself fled Germany for Singapore. Here he worked briefly as a photographer for the Singapore Strait Times until he made another move, this time to Melbourne, Australia.
During World War II Newton served with the Australian army as a truck driver, then decided to follow his dream, opening his first photography studio in 1946. Two years later he married actress June Browne and gained his Australian citizenship. Newton's initial photography work was standard of the time, primarily comprising weddings, baby portraits and mail order catalogs. But in 1952 his big break came when he began working for fashion-iconic Australian Vogue magazine. In 1956 Newton partnered with Henry Talbot and gave his studio a new name: Helmut Newton and Henry Talbot.
By the late 1950s, Newton's reputation as a photographer was growing. He left for London on assignment in 1959 and eventually landed in Paris in 1961. From this new locale, his work appeared nationally and internationally in such magazines as Elle, Marie Claire, Playboy and French Vogue. During this time Newton's photography style began to emerge as covertly sexual, even hinting occasionally at the fetishistic.
Throughout the 1960s Newton's celebrity status brought him increasingly exotic assignments. Then, following a heart attack in 1971, Newton's work took on new purpose. He began to openly explore sexual themes, rocking the photography world and capturing interest around the globe. Newton's wife, June, is said to have encouraged him in this new career course as he began to depict women in increasingly aggressive and sometimes menacing roles. The 1978 horror classic "The Eyes of Laura Mars" was influenced directly by Newton's work.
Newton was the recipient of a number of honors, including Germany's Kodak Award for Photographic Books, the Tokyo Art Director's Club prize and an American Institute of Graphic Arts award. He was also recognized by the French and German governments. Life magazine honored Newton with the Life Legend Award for Lifetime Achievement in Magazine Photography in 1999. In 2003, Newton donated a large photo collection to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, the land of his birth. The collection remains there today.
Newton continued to travel during his waning years, primarily alternating between Los Angeles and Monte Carlo. He died on Jan. 24, 2004, in an automobile accident. His ashes are buried in his home city of Berlin.
Two cameras, one couple: Helmut Newton and Alice Springs turn the lens on their love and their life
Us and Them is an ode to partnership and art. First published in 1999, it gathers photographs by Helmut Newton and his wife, the actress and photographer June Newton, who worked under the pseudonym Alice Springs. The collection is arranged into five sections, alternating the gaze between Newton and Spring’s own tender internal world of “Us”, and the glamorous encounters of their social and professional milieu -“Them”.
The “Us” sections of the book reveal the pair’s portraits of each other and themselves, as startling in their moments of vulnerability as they are infectious in their episodes of joy. We see the pair pensive, weary, or roaring with laughter. Alice photographs Helmut on set with his models, in the shower, and in stilettos. Helmut captures Alice in the kitchen, in costume, and hanging up the washing in the nude. Along the way, we are alerted to the frailties and intimacies that make up a long-term partnership and that coexisted with the high-voltage glamour for which Newton is renowned. The particular power of the pictures is to locate as much magnetism and beauty in an aging, ailing partner (Helmut in the hospital, Alice adjusting her spectacles), as in the pristine physiques of a Newton fashion shoot.
In the concluding “Them” section, Newton and Springs each turn their lens on the same, typically famous, subjects, including Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling, David Hockney, Dennis Hopper, Karl Lagerfeld, and Timothy Leary. While Newton casts these subjects with his unique brand of statuesque allure, Springs deploys a softer focus to find something more suggestive, delicate, or playful.
As we move from, in Newton’s words, “truth and simplicity” to “editorializing”, through youth and age, love and sex, and the public and private spheres, Us and Them offers not only an elegant example of independent visions within a shared life, but also a tender and inspiring chronicle of love through passing time.
Polaroids occupy a special place in photography, all the more so since the development of digital techniques. The instant print and absence of editing tools allows these one-of-a kind images a beguiling realness: In no other photographic medium does the moment find its material form with such sincerity and such speed.
Throughout his career, Helmut Newton used polaroids not just for their poetics but as a crucial tool for testing lighting and composition before a shoot began. Many photographers threw these tests away. Luckily for us, Newton kept his, allowing his widow June Newton to assemble this fascinating behind-the-scenes look at some of his greatest shoots, from the classic nudes in Milan to latex-clad shots in St. Tropez.
With images visible folds or handwriting, these snaps from the seventies, eighties, and nineties are akin to the preparatory sketches to masterpiece paintings. Offering fascinating insight into Newton’s creative direction and process, they stand as works of art in their own right, and as a historical testament to a bygone age of fashion photography.
SUMO was a titanic book in every respect: a 480-page tribute to the 20th century's most influential, intriguing and controversial photographer, breaking records for weight and dimensions. Fifty people worked with Helmut and June Newton for three years to complete a book that weighed 30kg (66lbs). But size wasn't everything. Control and quality - printing, paper, binding - were all critical in making SUMO a worldwide publishing sensation, which is in many famous collections all around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
I discovered the work of Jackson Patterson while judging the first edition of All About Photo Awards - The Mind's Eye. My co-jurors Frank Horvat, Ed kashi, Klavdij Sluban, Julia Fullerton-Batten, Cara Weston, Jules Maeght, Ami Vitale, Ann Jastrab and Keiichi Tahara and myself were impressed by his work Red Barn that was exhibited at Jules Maeght Gallery. He tells the stories of his family and others intertwined with the majestic landscapes in his photomontages. Patterson's images breathe insight into representation, fabrication, visual language and the relationship of earth and people.
Stephan Gladieu's career began in 1989 covering war & social issues, traveling across Europe,Central Asia, the Middle East (Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan) and Asia (India, Nepal, Vietnam, China, etc). His work began as travel features, but he became increasingly interested in using portraiture to illustrate the human condition around the world. His portraiture has included covering the Saudi Princes, Princesses in Nepal, actors & directors behind the scenes at Cannes Film Festival, politicians, intellectuals, but also everyday people the world over.
Virginia native Rebecca Moseman received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1997 and her Master of Fine Arts from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2001. She has worked in academia, private industry, and Government as an instructor, consultant, and graphic designer and does freelance work in photography and publishing. We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
Michael P. Stone, our only child, died of AIDS in November 1984, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Michael was 19 and a senior at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Svetlin Yosifov is a freelance photographer based in Bulgaria. He won the 1st place for the AAP Magazine #9 Shadows with his work 'Mursi People'. We asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Bill Owens took iconic photos of the Hells Angels beating concertgoers with pool cue sticks at the Rolling Stones' performance during the Altamont Speedway Free Festival four months after Woodstock on December 6, 1969. Altamont, which included violence almost all day and one stabbing death, is considered by historians as the end of the Summer of Love and the overall 1960's youth ethos. This series of photos include panoramas of the massive, unruly crowd, Grace Slick and Carlos Santana on stage with the press of humanity so close in, they're clearly performing under duress.
Vicky Martin is a fine art photographer based in the UK. She won the 1st place for the All About Photo Magazine #5 Colors with her work "Not in Kansas". We asked her a few questions about her life and work.
An activist as well as documentarian, Steve Schapiro covered many stories related the Civil Rights movement as well as more than 200 films. Now available in a popular edition by Taschen, "The Fire Next Time" with James Baldwin's frank account of the black experience and Schapiro's vital images, the book offers poetic and potent testimony to one of the most important struggles of American society.
Coinciding with the release of Schapiro's new photo book, we asked him a few questions about his life and work.
Graeme William's work on South Africa is acclaimed worldwide and has been published on the cover of Time magazine twice as well as published in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Newsweek, Stern... to name just a few. But for the last five years he shifted his attention from South Africa to the United States. We asked him a few questions about his new project "America Revisited"
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