At the occasion of the exhibition of Helmut Newton and Greg Gorman, Matthias Harder wrote this text :
With this exhibition, the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin celebrates an anniversary: ten years ago, in the fall of 2003, Helmut Newton established his foundation and entered into a partnership with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Within the framework of a public- private partnership, a comprehensive collection of original prints, vintage exhibition posters and archival objects made their way to Newton’s native city of Berlin on permanent loan. In the summer of 2004 following a brief period of renovation, the Museum for Photography opened its doors in a former military casino, with a double exhibition. The photographer himself was never able to experience the show, as he passed away in Los Angeles shortly before its opening.
Yet Helmut Newton lives on through his work. Regular exhibitions are organized and presented not only in Berlin, but made available on loan to various institutions throughout Europe. The 2012 exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris is one such example. This was the first comprehensive presentation of Newton’s work in the French capital city since his death. It was also the first exhibition ever to present the works of a photographer within the walls of this illustrious exhibition space. Now this exhibition returns to its source for a show in Berlin, and the path it has taken is reflected in its title. The show unites essential series from the photographer’s oeuvre: fashion, nudes, portraits, as well as the mixed forms that were so characteristic of the photographer. More than 200 photographs in black & white and color are featured in various formats, including vintage prints.
While some of these images have been shown in earlier exhibition contexts at the Helmut Newton Foundation, others are presented here for the first time. With every new combination, new dimensions of the work of this renowned photographer allow themselves to be discovered. Customary expectations are challenged by the side-by-side presentation of an iconic image such as “Rue Aubriot, Paris 1975” with a second shot of the same motif, to which a nude model has been added. Here, Helmut Newton photographed a tuxedo by Yves Saint Laurent for French Vogue; this is hardly unusual – notwithstanding the fashion designer’s revolutionary creation – but the manner of photographic staging is unrivalled. Like a still life, a female model with short hair stands self-assured, smoking at night in a narrow, dimly lit alleyway; she appears to wait for no one. Two associations from the history of art and photography immediately come to mind. The first: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s nocturnal street scenes of Potsdamer Platz from the early 1910s, in which he documented fashionably clad women standing in a tension between prostitution and a modern, urban lifestyle. Further parallels can be found with Brassaï’s portraits of prostitutes, many of which he photographed in the Parisian quarter of Le Marais in the 1930s. Forty years later, Newton also selected this quarter as the backdrop for his fashion photography. In his second photograph of the model, at the same location but now with a nude model at her side, Newton intensifies the already confounding androgyny of the dressed woman. The combination of a clothed with a nude woman in the context of fashion was radical for its time and unfitting for publication in a fashion magazine like French Vogue. Newton expanded upon this combination of clothed and nude models starting in the 1980s with his famous series “Naked and Dressed.” The series was published in his third photography book Big Nudes as well as in the Italian and French versions of Vogue; by this point, such renowned fashion magazines no longer held the motif combination for taboo. Two diptychs from the series that were shot in Rue Aubriot earlier, in the mid-1970s, are also included in the current exhibition.
The exhibition also presents numerous portraits of notable figures ranging from Pierre Cardin to Margaret Thatcher, fashion photographs for magazines from the 1960s through the 1990s, nudes, as well as product shots. Another highlight are the “Fired” images: the legendary Courrèges photographs that were first published in 1964 in the fashion magazine Queen,and which resulted in Newton’s immediate dismissal from Vogue. These images brilliantly translate the ultra-modern designs of the French designer into the photographic image, challenging convention with the women’s pants, the above-the-knee dresses, and above all the spectacular space-age look. At the time, the image and social status of women were undergoing radical change. Newton photographed the Courrèges models without accessories in narrow, claustrophobic spaces, whose metal walls reflected and multiplied the clothes and the models. Later, at the end of the 1960s, Newton photographed fashion for Elle in a confounding mirrored room; this time the photographer reveals himself behind the women with his small format camera in the shot. With his self-ironic commentary on the work process and reflection on the medium itself, Newton was ahead of his time.
On occasion, Helmut Newton was known to photograph himself in the buff, and in 1974 he also portrayed a naked Helmut Berger; in general, however, the male nude was of marginal significance in his work. Upon invitation by June Newton, who under the pseudonym Alice Springs occasionally photographed male nudes, the American portrait photographer Greg Gorman will present a series of male nudes in a show parallel to the Helmut Newton exhibition. Here in “June’s Room,” we encounter young, trained bodies in black & white prints in various formats, some of them nearly life-sized.
Greg Gorman was born in 1949 in Kansas City and currently lives in Los Angeles. He launched his career in photography while still a student in Kansas City, with pictures he took of Jimi Hendrix at a concert in 1968. Later in California, Gorman remained true to show business, and in addition to numerous commercial jobs, photographed primarily actors and musicians, including the likes of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, Michael Jackson, and David Bowie. Some of these iconic black & white photographs were used as film posters; others appeared on the covers of CDs or magazines such as LIFE, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and Vogue. At the same time he started exploring nude photography, often at plein air workshops conducted at his second home in Mendocino, a small artist community north of San Francisco. For this accompanying exhibition, Greg Gorman and June Newton selected 25 motifs that were created between 1988 and 2012, for the most part in Gorman’s studio in Los Angeles. Pictured alone or in groups, the young men move before the camera like dancers on an empty stage. Gorman’s nude portraits are both timeless and sensual.
Even today, nude portraiture of male models is considered improper in many places. Although the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival included a male nude by Greg Gorman on its festival poster last year, the model was posed so as to conceal his genitals. However, this is not always the case with the photographs by Gorman that are on display at the Helmut Newton Foundation.
EXHIBITION
Until May 18, 2014
Helmut Newton Foundation
Jebensstraße 2
10623 Berlin
