The intelligence and impartiality of this documentary about provocative fashion photographer Helmut Newton has changed the flattering tone that is achieved in many fashion films. The documentary now broadcasts on the Film Forum and Kino Marquee includes interviews with some of his favorite characters such as Grace Jones, Claudia Schiffer and Isabella Rouse.
Isabella Rossellini believes in the film he brought controversy and debate into fashion and editorial photography while Newton made a name for himself exploring female forms – something the film suggests he hated. In the 1970s her work revolutionized fashion photography and paved the way for modern photography to become more creative and risky. By integrating complex topics of sexuality into her work and shooting on the site, she has proven that fashion photography does not have to be safe and limited to the workshop.
In the 1950s, Newton was growing in fashion photography and he was offered the opportunity to become a fashion model for Vogue in 1956, and in 1957 he went to London where he was offered a one-year contract with British Vogue, but then Newton continued to work for German and French magazines.
Helmut Newton was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in Berlin and acquired his first camera at the age of 12 in order to devote himself to photography when he worked as an apprentice for the theatrical photographer Willow in Berlin. At the age of fourteen he rebelled against family wealth and the decline of Berlin society.
Helmut Neustadter (October 31, 1920 — January 23, 2004) was an Australian-born fashion photographer who earned international fame in the 1970s, mainly for France, and became famous for his controversial scripts, bold lighting and vibrant compositions outside or indoors rather than in the studio. October 31, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary fashion photographer Helmut Newton.
As we celebrate his legacy, let’s take a look at how much Newton’s work is still relevant and why it remains one of the most controversial and original figures in fashion photography – and one of the most hilarious – as shown by his hilarious and self-confident autobiography. The documentary by Gero von Bems is a vivid, although mundane, look into the career of the most iconoclastic fashion photographer of the 20th century.
Newton is best known in film circles for his 1988 photograph of David Lynch and his muse Isabella Rossellini in Los Angeles at the height of their Blue Velvet fame; they are all recognized as leading masters of fashion photography of the 20th century, who have contributed to influential fashion publications such as Vogue and Harpers Bazaar.
The objects of her photographs are, upon closer inspection, a story about the emancipation of women and a depiction of femininity in a state of reality, naked or dressed. While these formative fashion editorials have already been published, they are accompanied by Newton’s anecdotes and behind-the-scenes descriptions of each shot. Allure magazine frequently uses his work to illustrate editorials, and his wife June Newton continues to work under the name Alice Springs.
The exhibition is based on the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin and combined the work of all three with personal photographs, auditions and letters from their time with Newton. Visitors can now expect to see not only many of Helmut Newton’s iconic images, but many surprises as well.
Newton (Helmut Neustadter), son of a Middle-class Jewish button maker, says his father despised his idea that photography could be more than a hobby. Apprenticed to pioneering fashion photographer Elsa Ernestine Neulander or Willow (who died in a Nazi camp) he fled Europe via Trieste, Italy, arrived in Singapore, where he was hired and fired by the Straits Times and left to sail as a gigolo, and then reached Australia, where
She recalls how one day, while recovering after a major operation, her stomach was grotesquely sewn up in the middle when Helmut asked her to throw the sheet out so that she could get closer through his lens. Rather than fleeing or passing out, as she thought, Helmut gently photographed her, capturing his wife in a moment of pathetic vulnerability.
