Source: vogue
Helmut Newton's photographic collection SUMO (1999) is somewhat intriguing at this time. The book is 464 pages long, weighs 35 kilograms, and comes with a specially designed stand by Philippe Starck. Redesigned to suit the times, the book was redesigned to be BABY SUMO, half the size of the original, and relatively reasonable, £1,000. (The first signed edition of SUMO sold for 620,000 marks at the Berlin auction in 2000, equivalent to around £506,000 today,[1] making it the most expensive book of the 20th century.) ）
In 2020, Newton's influence continues, and vogue's October edition of the Italian edition features an article about the photographer's artistic influence on the eve of his 100th birthday. Newton emerged against the backdrop of the second wave of feminist movements in the 1970s and was one of the most influential visual artists of his time. His photographs define the way fashion themes and advertising present women.
Controversial pioneers[2]
Newton was born in Berlin in 1920 as the son of a Jewish button maker. As a child, he had no worries, his mother would carefully wear a taffeta bow tie for him, and he often went to the Berliner Schwimm Club to swim and play in the water. There, he was drawn to swimsuits that swimsuits were "always wet", and later injected the memory into his work, such as a 1984 photograph of Daryl Hannah pedaling through-clear plastic heels, a purple-red swimsuit, and a crying baby on her knees.
In 1938, in order to escape Nazi persecution, Newton traveled to Singapore and later settled in Australia, where he met his wife and artistic partner, June Newton, who was the editor of the new version of SUMO. Newton's goal was to take pictures of Vogue (his first contract was signed with Vogue UK in 1956 and then moved to Vogue Australia), but it wasn't until the mid-1960s that he began to work on fashion topics seriously. In 1967, photographs featuring model Willy Van Rooy introduced narrative early into fashion photography. In a series titled "How to Make Fur Fly," Van Rooy gallops toward the camera, followed by a small plane, inspired by famous scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film North by Northwest.
His fetishistic depictions of women are unforgettable. Naked female bodies in different states may seem shocking and stimulating at first glance, and women seem to be objectified. But the meaning of these photographs is more complex, they play with human desires, lusts, gender and power. Judging from the photographs of Sie Kommen and others published in the 1981 Vogue Paris edition, fashion photography, whose main task is to show fashion, has taken a different level in his hands. Newton's ingenious approach to making the sale of eroticism the norm brings the viewer an unattainable charm. He taught us that selling fantasies is far more impressive than selling new clothes.
He succeeded, and he meant to provoke. In a 1975 photograph titled Rue Aubriot, the model is dressed in a "Le Smoking" tuxedo suit by Yves Saint Laurent. Paris in the background takes on a Newtonian black-and-white graininess, which he describes as "black light." Women rarely wore trouser suits in the mid-70s, and the photos broke the gender stereotype. The bright street lamps in the picture hint at what has just happened or is about to happen – it is our imagination that makes this work. Another work in the series gives a further clue: a wearing only high heels and a veil appears on the side of the male and female blazer. The electric flint between the two creates a sexual tension, perhaps erotic— depending on who is watching.
Inflammatory and influential
Newton once said, "I love women more than anything else." He wanted to portray women as strong and powerful, but he was saddled with misogyny, most notably the author, activist and philosopher Susan Sontag, who denounced him in person, a clip featured on French television titled Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful (2020).
In the social context of #MeToo, Newton's works cannot be clearly interpreted in one or two sentences. Today our discussion focuses on positions, namely the social and political contexts that shape an individual's identity. Newton was a heterosexual white male, and in his days of work, mainstream opinion would not point out whether his photographs were a symbol of patriarchal society. The photographs are touted with sensual fantasies, and according to the photographer's imagination and construction, they hint at the erotic struggle between the prey and the hunter. But we also need to recognize the autonomous lust of the heroines in his lens. As Grace Jones put it in the trailer for the aforementioned documentary: "He's a bit of a pervert, but so am I!" ”
The complexity of Newton's works is that they represent women from a male perspective, but the target audience is women. Flipping through Newton's photographs, more questions arise. Will women living in 2020 want to be Newton's muse-like women? There is no standard answer to being a woman, and there will be no such question.