Helmut Newton, Sex and Landscapes
Introduction to the book 'Helmut Newton. Sex & Landscapes. By Philippe Garner.
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Helmut spent his professional life observing, reconstructing and recording. He always prided himself on being a "gun for hire," a commercial photographer with a wide audience that he reached through the printed page. And of course his reputation was made through the chic seduction of his fashion work, through the sexual shocks, and through the glamour and twists of his portraits of the beautiful, the privileged, the talented, and the notorious.
But there are other facets to his work, just as there are multiple layers to his commissioned fashion, advertising, erotic, and portrait work. Helmut would constantly make pictures of things he found fascinating - interiors, street scenes, buildings, parks, seascapes, landscapes - all kinds of moments, details and vistas, often inflected by a mysterious light. These pictures were a regular by-product of his travels, frequently taken when he was on location for clients, and snatched as incidental trophies during and around the commercial shoots. Others were taken nearer to home, many from his Monte Carlo balcony. Though he was always ready to show or share such images, until he started to introduce them on his own initiative in the 1980s within his series of magazine - like publications Helmut Newton's Illustrated, they remained a little known aspect of his output and languished in his archives.
Helmut would laugh when explaining that nobody was interested in his pictures of flowers, and it was perhaps his way of reminding us of the range of his visual curiosity. He was not as one-track-minded as popular perceptions might suggest. Everything was grist to the mill of his long photographic exploration. Through his obsession with making photographs, he reconstituted the world from his unique perspective. Photography was a never-ending and all-embracing process of investigation, arguably a methodology for confirming and asserting his identity. By making pictures he explored and defined his particular fascination with women, but also his wider responses to people, places, history and situations. Photography gave him the opportunity to chart his perceptions in physical terms - through the evidence that he fixed on film. This data eventually constituted a kind of vast visual autobiography within which he drew no distinction between pictures made for a client or those made for himself. Indeed, his strength lay in his ability to be true to his vision in all circumstances.
Seite 1 2
Seite 1 2
Helmut spent his professional life observing, reconstructing and recording. He always prided himself on being a "gun for hire," a commercial photographer with a wide audience that he reached through the printed page. And of course his reputation was made through the chic seduction of his fashion work, through the sexual shocks, and through the glamour and twists of his portraits of the beautiful, the privileged, the talented, and the notorious.
But there are other facets to his work, just as there are multiple layers to his commissioned fashion, advertising, erotic, and portrait work. Helmut would constantly make pictures of things he found fascinating - interiors, street scenes, buildings, parks, seascapes, landscapes - all kinds of moments, details and vistas, often inflected by a mysterious light. These pictures were a regular by-product of his travels, frequently taken when he was on location for clients, and snatched as incidental trophies during and around the commercial shoots. Others were taken nearer to home, many from his Monte Carlo balcony. Though he was always ready to show or share such images, until he started to introduce them on his own initiative in the 1980s within his series of magazine - like publications Helmut Newton's Illustrated, they remained a little known aspect of his output and languished in his archives.
Helmut would laugh when explaining that nobody was interested in his pictures of flowers, and it was perhaps his way of reminding us of the range of his visual curiosity. He was not as one-track-minded as popular perceptions might suggest. Everything was grist to the mill of his long photographic exploration. Through his obsession with making photographs, he reconstituted the world from his unique perspective. Photography was a never-ending and all-embracing process of investigation, arguably a methodology for confirming and asserting his identity. By making pictures he explored and defined his particular fascination with women, but also his wider responses to people, places, history and situations. Photography gave him the opportunity to chart his perceptions in physical terms - through the evidence that he fixed on film. This data eventually constituted a kind of vast visual autobiography within which he drew no distinction between pictures made for a client or those made for himself. Indeed, his strength lay in his ability to be true to his vision in all circumstances.
Seite 1 2
