In the 1960s, however, his fame was at its peak, although even then (as always) there were both admirers of his provocative erotic photographs and their fundamental opponents. He follows all this and discusses the documentary Helmut Newton: Shameless Beauty, which enters cinemas.
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Newton would be a hundred years old this year (he died in a car accident in 2004) and, despite all the controversy, his photographs are still modern, lively, provocative and inspiring. He claimed in himself that he was definitely not an artist, in the film he even heard from his mouth: “There are two vulgar words for me in photography: art and good taste.”
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Similarly, he claims that he does not understand why they blame him for not photographing souls. “I photograph the body, the face, I’m interested in the breasts, the legs. And you can see it in my photos. Maybe something more. “
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However, whether he likes it today or not, many of his photographs, as well as many that have survived their time, are undoubtedly works of art.
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The film admits the controversy of Newton’s work, but all the personalities that director Gero von Boehm invited to collaborate on the film speak of him in superlatives.
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“I was shy, I was just seventeen,” recalls Claudia Schiffer. “But I didn’t feel uncomfortable for a moment.” And Charlotte Rampling said, “I felt like a princess with him. It gave me a sense of great power. He’ll know what’s interesting about you, and he’ll get it out. “
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He traveled the world
Newton was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, so he had to drop out of school when Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws came into force. Before the war, he managed to go first to Singapore and then to Australia, where he met his lifelong love of June, with which he married. She was his model, and the photographer herself, also a collaborator.
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He traveled the world, worked for the magazines Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and Playboy, organized exhibitions, published publications. His photographs became part of the post-war culture, as the actress Isabella Rossellini puts it precisely: He took pictures of naked women and it had a cut. “
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