Catherine Deneuve captured by Newton

Due to popular demand, Berlin’s Museum für Fotographie has extended its current exhibition ‘Helmut Newton: Sumo’, until May 16th. Presented by the Helmut Newton Foundation, the 394 photographs on display commemorate the tenth anniversary of the photography book project bearing the same name.

Helmut Newton (1920- 2004) consistently shunned political correctness throughout his life. Newton had a hard-hitting, almost mechanical view of his mostly female subjects, many of whom often appeared nude or semi-nude. He was regularly criticised for being a decadent dandy and the perfect ‘Peeping Tom’, not to mention sexist. However, Newton captured something many other twentieth century photographers failed to achieve; his portraits show women that are anything but passive subjects – there’s powerful, strong feminine presence. These are women in control of their sexuality, and their image.

While he documented the exclusive and often eccentric lives of the rich and famous ranging from old school celebrities such as a gingham-clad Catherine Deneuve lit against a concrete wall at gunpoint and a resplendent Liz Taylor bathing in the pool for Newton’s camera, a green parrot perched on her finger;  his portraits are intensely individual. He was also interested in capturing the frailty and humility of those constantly in the public eye: royalty, such as Princess Caroline of Monaco or male power players such as Gianni Agnelli and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

With the ‘Sumo’ exhibition, Newton’s fashion shots and nude photography, portraiture as well as advertising images hang side by side in equal standing. Some of these images can be found in other Newton publications, while others are premiered in the book and may only now for the first time be seen on exhibit.

Sumo is a titanic book in every respect: it is a tribute to Newton’s cool, urgent style captured in his fetishistic tableaux, S & M scenes and witty portraits. Measuring and weighing approximately  35 kg, the book contains 464 pages and measures an extraordinary page size  of 50 x 70 cm. Published in an edition of 10,000 signed and numbered copies, this worldwide coffee table sensation is now housed in important collections around the world, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Sumo copy number one, autographed by over 100 of the book’s featured celebrities, also broke the record for the most expensive book published in the 20th century, selling at auction in Berlin in 2000 for 620,000 German Marks. Accompanying the book was a custom-made book holder, designed by the enfant terrible of the art world, Phillippe Starck.

Newton himself said that he was never tied to countries, but rather connected to cities. He fled Berlin in 1938, and, after a short stint in Singapore, spent almost 20 years in Melbourne, serving in the Australian army and gaining Australian citizenship. There he met and married his muse and later editorial collaborator, model June Newton. His work took him to Paris, London and Los Angeles.

Helmut Newton's raw, powerful sexuality

While he only lived 18 years in his native Germany, the influence of his homeland however, is evident in what is without question his most notorious  and recognisable oeuvre: “Big Nudes I-V“. Hanging in the foyer of the museum, these five black and white life-size portraits of different women, at once attract and repel the viewer, due to the sheer scale of the nudity: each model faces the camera and wears stilettos. It hints at the Amazonian beauty prototype of the 80s. Newton’s inspiration for the series came from German police photographs of the 1970s student Baader-Meinhof gangwhich showed the full-length identity shots of the gang members, hanging in the police search squad offices.

Another similar work “Walking Women”, a wall-sized series of nude female models gracing an entire wall, was commissioned especially for the Newton Bar in Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt Square. It remains the world’s largest privately owned Newton photograph.

Love him or hate him – his iconographic images defined fashion and documented society- constantly threatening to expose the viewer as the voyeur.

Helmut Newton: Sumo is showing until 16 May 2010.

Find out more about the exhibition online here.