Helmut Newton & Philippe Starck Biography
Helmut Newton (1920 - 2004) was a photographer best known for his work in fashion, often creating work for Vogue magazine and for his provocative and thoughtful nude photographs. Born to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1920, Newton received his first camera at age 12, often neglecting his studies at school to devote himself to photography. As a teenager, Newton apprenticed to theater photographer Yva in Berlin. He fled growing Nazi oppression in Germany in 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht, and worked in Singapore and Australia during the Second World War, serving in the Australian Army for several years. He later opened a photography studio and returned to Europe in the 1950s. In Paris he began working for French Vogue, and later for Harper's Bazaar, Playboy, Elle and other publications in the 1950s and 1960s as his reputation grew, often traveling around the world on assignments. Known for the dramatic lighting and unconventional poses of his sitters in his photographs, Newton's work has been characterized as obsessive and subversive, incorporating themes of sadomasochism, prostitution, violence, and a persistently open sexuality into the narratives of his images. He increasingly focused on these images rather than fashion photography in the 1970s, publishing several books of his work such as White Women (1976), Big Nudes (1981) and World Without Men (1984). He continued to travel later in life and died in a car accident in Los Angeles in 2003, aged 84. Among other honors, Newton has received the German Kodak Award for Photographic Books, the Life Legend Award from Life magazine, and an award from the American Institute for Graphic Arts.
