Matthias Harder

A stunning reproduction of a unique album of Helmut Newton’s iconic photographs including many previously unseen images German-Australian photographer Helmut Newton is one of the world’s most iconic fashion photographers. Inspired by Expressionist cinema, film noir, and surrealism, Newton was a prolific image-maker and visionary whose daring work helped shape modern photography and visual art. In 1999, along with collaborator Gert Elfering, Newton compiled a ‘one off’ photographic album of his boundary-pushing work. Helmut Newton: One-off reproduces this album in full, faithful the album’s original size, as an exquisite facsimile, allowing readers to experience this remarkable object in full and to marvel at Newton’s artistic process and ingenuity. The stunning album is comprised of more than 100 photographs – 8 unique Polaroids, 16 chromogenic prints, and 79 gelatin silver prints – each accompanied by Newton’s handwritten pencil annotation. Along with the album itself, the book includes a foreword by arts and photography expert Philippe Garner, as well as an insightful interview between Matthias Harder and Gert Elfering, together offering an immersive glimpse into Newton’s creative process.

Born in Berlin in 1920, Helmut Newton trained as a teenager with legendary photographer Yva, following her lead into the enticing pastures of fashion, portraiture and nudes. Forced to flee the Nazis aged only 18, Newton never left Berlin behind. After his career exploded in Paris in the 1960s, he returned regularly to shoot for magazines like Constanze, Adam, Vogue, Condé Nast's Traveler, ZEITmagazin, Männer Vogue, Max and the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin as well as his own magazine Helmut Newton’s Illustrated. In 1979, the newly relaunched German Vogue commissioned him to retrace the footsteps of his youth to capture the fashion moment. The resulting portfolio, Berlin, Berlin!, inspired the title of the exhibition which celebrates 20 years of the Helmut Newton Foundation. This collection includes Newton’s most iconic Berlin images, as well as many unknown shots from the 1930s to the 2000s: nightcrawlers in uber-cool clubs and restaurants, nude portraits in the boarding houses he knew from his youth, and the Berlin film scene, featuring Hanna Schygulla and Wim Wenders at the Berlin Wall, John Malkovich and David Bowie. In October 2003, only months before his death, Newton moved large parts of his archive to his new foundation, housed in the Museum of Photography beside the Zoologischer Garten station—the very station from which he fled Berlin in the winter of 1938. This publication thus closes a circle in the story of his extraordinary life and work.

This is a photographic love story tracing the fifty-five years of collaboration, partnership and history of Helmut and June Newton. First published in 1998, their legendary joint project Us and Them was presented in book form and accompanying exhibitions. The book‘s first part – Us – features personal portraits of each other and self-portraits taken over several decades, revealing affection and intimacy behind each image and bringing forth nostalgia of the time. It is a photographic diary that records the life Helmut and June Newton shared away from the public eye. The second part of the book – Them – is a sumptuous journey through time, where the lens of the master brings forth images of stunning portraits of an array of jet set, celebrities, important cultural figures, and some of the most famous faces of the time. From Catherine Deneuve, Anjelica Huston, David Hockney, and Timothy Leary to Peter Beard, Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler, Jane Birkin, and Charlotte Rampling, among others. The portraits taken by Helmut and June Newton in various sittings are presented side by side in pairs, thus revealing two facets of the same personality. This volume unmistakably highlights that the life and work of Helmut and June Newton were inexplicably linked in every way. One was never possible without the other.

Virtually unparalleled in scope and spanning more than five decades, the photography of visionary Helmut Newton (1920–2004) reached millions through publication in magazines like Vogue and Elle. His oeuvre transcended genres, bringing elegance, style, and voyeurism to fashion, portrait, and glamour photography through a body of work that remains as inimitable as it is unrivaled. Having mastered the art of fashion photography early in his career, Newton’s shoots invariably went beyond standard practice, blurring the lines between reality and illusion. Newton’s clear aesthetic pervades all areas of his work, particularly fashion, portraiture, and nude photography. Women take center stage – with subjects such as Catherine Deneuve, Liz Taylor, and Charlotte Rampling. Moving beyond traditional narrative approaches, Newton’s fashion photography is imbued not only with luxurious elegance and subtle seduction, but also cultural references and a surprising sense of humor.During the 1990s, Newton shot for the German, American, Italian, French, and Russian editions of Vogue, primarily in and around Monte Carlo where he was living from 1981 onwards. Transforming locations like his own garage into starkly contrasting or particularly minimalist theatrical stages, Newton would often portray the eccentric lives of the beautiful and rich, full of eroticism and elegance, in unconventional scenarios. He made use of and simultaneously questioned visual clichés, at times tinged with self-irony or mockery, but always full of empathy.Helmut Newton. Legacy, which accompanies an international exhibition tour of Newton’s work, showcases highlights from one of the most published bodies of work in photography, including numerous rediscovered images. A prolific image maker and genuine visionary, this book celebrates Newton’s lasting influence on modern photography and visual art to this day.