Taste of Photography: Photographer: Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton (born Helmut Neustädter; 31 October 1920 – 23 January 2004) was a German-Australian photographer. He was a “prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications.”

Each photo by Helmut Newton is immediately recognizable by his signature setup, decor and atmosphere. Each series (for Vogue, Oui, Playboy, Marie-Claire or Nova) from this artist, who is German by birth , Australian by necessity and French by adoption, is a celebration of the imagination and the soul. Helmut Newton is currently the undisputed master of fashion and beauty photography.

You always take pictures of the same type of girl, the “society girl” stylish, ambiguous and perverse...

HN: To me, bourgeois women are more erotic than a hairdresser or a secretary. Nothing in these words is meant to be negative, it’s an observation. Class, elegance, education and sociological environments are factors I believe in. I sometimes feel guilty about it, but that’s the way it is. A bourgeois woman is naturally sexy. I hate when everything is exhibited in the window - it feels cheap. On the contrary, I love when you have to dig inside. I love communicating the idea that the women I show are accessible. They are actually. Their accessibility only depends on the time and money you want to spend...

You place your fantasies in your images.

HN: Exactly. I did a series of photos for Oui. A series of photos that showed a woman walking naked under a fur coat in places as diverse as the subway, an art gallery, the Ile Saint-Louis , a car on the Champs-Elysees and a street in Paris. I know where these images come from: from a childhood fantasy. When I was 14-years-old, I read a novel by Arthur Schitzler called “Fraulein Else.” This is the story of a banker who just went bankrupt and has a beautiful 17-year-old daughter. A man offered to bail out her father if she agreed to walk down the hallway of a hotel naked under a fur coat. She hesitates but decides to do it. One night, she came down from her room and walked around the man opening her coat. The man didn’t touch her and saved her father. I love this novel, which was written in 1910 and is incredibly audacious for that period. This is where these images come from. With that said, the process of making this series was really dangerous. It’s forbidden to shoot in the subway without permission and I think for these types of photos, the RATP wouldn’t even have bothered replying. I also wanted to photograph on a riverboat. When I expressed this idea to the press manager of the company, he almost fainted, so I did everything secretly. We started the series in a sumptuous car, driven by a chauffer and parked at the corner between Rue de Berri and the Champs-Elysees on a Thursday at 1pm. The girl was naked and her only clothing was a veil. The onlookers were flabbergasted.

You love shocking people and there is a touch of vulgarity in your images.

HN: A touch? You are modest. My photos are marked with vulgarity. Creativity comes from bad taste and vulgarity. In 1957, when I worked in Europe for the first time for UK Vogue, the editor-in-chief gave me an extremely long list of things to avoid. There were no photos possible anymore. For another magazine, which I still collaborate with today, there are two editors who have the same state-of-mind. With incredible ingenuity, they keep looking for accessories such as scarves, chic handbags, ballet flats and flowing garments that hide the body and make me drunk with anger. They systematically choose all the things that a normal man would consider anti-sexual. Would I make love with a girl dressed in such a way? This is the first question I ask myself when I shoot fashion photos. These two editors don’t understand that. Their mothers were like that and they are perpetuating the tradition. Good taste is anti-fashion, anti-photo, anti-girl, anti-eroticism! Vulgarity is life, amusement, desire, extreme reactions!

Though you are extremely distant from the model in your voyeurism.

HN: Yes, voyeurism in photography is a necessary and professional sickness. Look at, capture, observe, frame, target. These are the laws of our field. The world is totally different when I look at it through the viewfinder. I always take a step back from what I see through my camera. I use it as a screen.

You often use swimming pools and hotel rooms as décor...

HN: Because I’m lazy. When I travel, I hate looking for outdoor places. I never go further than 2 or 3 km from the hotel. Plus, I love the hotels. This again,is a childhood fantasy. I love all the hotels, from the sumptuous old palaces, such as The Ritz, to the depressing, prison-like, cold, modern buildings. This is convenient, a hotel. There is room service and it’s less expensive than renting a studio. I even did two shoots in a brothel. The owner was reluctant, as he was not looking for publicity, but finally, he agreed. He loaned me a room on a slow day – Sunday, naturally. The second time, he saw me coming with the model, my assistant, the hairdresser and her assistant and he exclaimed, “Are you coming for an orgy or to take photos?!”

How do your images come to life?

HN: They come from a student notebook. In it, I write down everything I’m interested in and it is divided into three sections: ideas, girls and locations. If I don’t write, I forget. All my notes are first in a standby mode, then they start on their way, ferment and finally take shape. Last year I saw on a beach in St. Tropez, two boys and a girl who were happy being together. A perfect harmonious trio. I reproduced this situation recently for a fashion series I did for Italian Vogue.

What was your childhood like?

HN: I was born more than forty years ago, in Berlin to a respectable, bourgeois family. I had a childhood without any problems and I adored my parents. When I turned 12, my father gave me my first camera. I did my first seven pictures in the subway. Naturally, we couldn’t see anything. The eighth image is from the radio tower in Berlin. My grades were deplorable. I was the biggest dunce of them all. When I turned 14, because at that time, school finished at 1pm, I got a job in the afternoon as a photographer’s assistant but didn’t tell my parents. This lasted for 6 months. My grades continued to get dramatically worse and my father took away my camera and locked me inside the house. At 16, my parents had lost all hope. I began as an apprentice for a portrait photographer named Yva, who was famous at the time. I’ve always wanted to be a photographer. When I was 13, I imagined I was in a raincoat, running around the world on the arm of a dreamlike creature and driving huge cars. At 14, I took photos of my friends in the streets wearing my mother’s dresses and hats. It’s during this time I promised myself that I would become a fashion photographer for Vogue. With Yva, I learned how to use a large-format camera, especially the 13x18. Yva had a really wonderful one with color slides. It was an enormous, heavy mahogany box that required a one-second exposure in the full sun at noon. At 18 years old, I left Germany to go to Australia.

Technically, you are a jack-of-all-trades. There is no camera you haven’t tried.

HN: Yes, I’m searching, I’m trying, I’m experimenting, but this is a common practice. The range of amateur cameras is wider than professional. Why wouldn’t I be interested by it? The miniaturization of the bodies and the flashes can be really helpful. All my material today is composed of four bodies, five lenses, one flash, one Polaroid and everything fits in luggage that weighs 17 kilos, which allows me to take any type of photo, anywhere, in any condition.

How did you evolve technically?

HN: I started with a large-format Graflex, 4x5 inches, Super D, then I turned to Rolleiflex. I don’t like the Hasselblad, as it’s too heavy and too noisy. Afterwards, I consecutively used Nikon (in 1962, following the advice of Frank Horvat), Konica, Olympus and Instamatic. Today, my definitive choice is Nikon and Pentax. I recently got a Leica CL in my hands. This is a wonderful object, but I can’t use it. I don’t feel my images through this viewfinder. It took me a while to get used to the 24x36. From the Rolleiflex that you wear at your belly to the Nikon that you wear at eye-level, this is a very different vision and perspective.

Are you a fanatic of Kodachrome II?

HN: Yes, but this emulsion lacks sensitivity and it’s still too slow. I sometimes use Ektachrome X in certain conditions.

What are your favorite lenses?

HN: The longest possible one that still enables me to not lose the contact with the subject I’m shooting. When I shoot in a hotel or a studio, I always have my ass touching the wall. I don’t like the studio. I hate backgrounds and only feel at ease outside. I’m not a good technician. I was really bad. I’ve made some progress. The automatic system helped me a lot in that field. I built myself a technique based on simple means and, if possible, not requiring the help of an assistant. A large part of my work lies on the use of flash.

Which photographers have inspired you?

HN: Penn, Avedon, Baron de Meyer, Steichen, Honeighen Hune, William Klein, Weegee, Sander, Brassai and Lartigue.

We could say a few young photographers are shooting “some Newton.” What do you think about this?

HN: This amuses me enormously but I’m quite happy about it. In the beginning, one should always be inspired by someone you admire. I did the same thing when I was young. We always mimic someone at one point or another in our life, but then, we need to follow our own path.

What do you hate about photography?

HN: Dishonesty. The disgusting image shot in the name of an artistic principle. Blurry images. Grainy images. Bad technique.

To young boys who would love to become a photographer, what advice would you give them?

HN: Ideally, to be the assistant of the photographer of your choice, but not even 1 in 10,000 would get that opportunity. I think that a young photographer should be hired in a big, commercial studio in order to get familiarized and to learn the ABC’s of the technique. In the meantime, he should take photos whenever he has a free moment. When one wants to be a photographer, you should live exclusively towards achieving this goal.

Would you like to teach?

HN: Yes, this would captivate me. Jeanloup Sieff, Peter Knapp and I have imagined a project that we may achieve one day. This would consist of limited courses that would imitate real photo shoots. Maybe one day?

website: www.helmutnewton.com

facebook: www.facebook.com/newtonfoundation