Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton pushed the boundaries of the fashion industry with his erotically charged often menacing imagery.

The few men in Helmut Newton’s Œuvre remain passive and anonymous, like crash-test dummies dressed for the occasion. The rectilinear view of a woman lying with her lover beside a black Citroen. The man is concealed by the woman, whose back is to the camera. As usual, the woman is naked except for her red elevator shoes which gleam like lipstick. The ground is covered with dead leaves, an ursatz which heightens the romanticism of the image. The passive man, still wearing his suit, becomes a bi-gender surrogate for the photographer who, by declension, becomes you, the viewer.

While Newton says his work is all documentary and never fantasy, always based on experience, this can be discounted as political modesty.

It must be noted that not all these photos are successful: some are merely weird, succumb to the infantilism of perverse sexual decorum. The documentary gestalt overrides the surrealism, challenges the notion of art. Hints of bi-sexual adventurism adds to the general vibe of old Euro decadence in a contemporary ethos.

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