Helmut Newton: Berlin, Berlin marks city’s lifelong influence

HELMUT NEWTON: BERLIN, BERLIN MARKS CITY’S LIFELONG INFLUENCE

The late Helmut Newton is one of the photographic giants most often quoted as an influence by photographers who work today in the fetish genre. What gave Newton his fetish appeal was the talent he established for shooting erotic, stylised fashion images, often with sado-masochistic and fetishistic subtexts, in a way that, by the 1970s, had revolutionised high-end fashion photography and brought him international renown.

For those in that era with kinky sensibilities, his 1976 anthology White Women was a revelation, soon to be followed — despite the heart attack that had slowed his output at the beginning of that decade — by further eye-watering collections in the form of Sleepless Nights (1978) and Big Nudes (1981). These monographs, and several subsequent collections, were drawn substantially from the work he did for the different international editions of Vogue, where he was celebrated for his controversial scenarios and the ability to make a thoroughly planned photograph seem fresh and dynamic.

Top image: Helmut Newton: Berlin, Berlin (Taschen) cover, centre, bordered left and right by images from inside the book. All photos by Helmut Newton except top right: Helmut by Alice Springs (June Newton)

Helmut Newton: Berlin, Berlin (Taschen), page 72: Berlin Nude, Berlin 1977; page 73: Jenny Capitaine, Pension Florian, Berlin 1977

But if Newton was a major influence on many of the photographers whose work you may well enjoy today, then it is equally true that Berlin was a major influence on Newton.

Born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1920, Helmut trained as a teenager with legendary photographer Yva, following her lead into the enticing pastures of fashion, portraiture and nudes. But he was forced to flee the Nazis aged just 18, and after a brief spell in Singapore, spent most of World War II in Australia. After the war, In 1946, he became a British subject, changing his surname from Neustädter to Newton. In 1948 he married actress June Browne, who later became a successful photographer in her own right, working under the pseudonym Alice Springs, an ironic reference to the Australian town of that name.

After his career exploded in Paris in the 1960s, Helmut returned regularly to Berlin to shoot for magazines like Constanze, Adam, Vogue, Condé Nast's Traveler, Zeitmagazin, Männer Vogue, Max and the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin as well as his own magazine, Helmut Newton’sIllustrated.

Helmut Newton: Berlin, Berlin (Taschen) , pages 95-96: Photography for Vogue

Newton died in 2004, just after the launch of the German Fetish Ball set Berlin on the road to becoming the annual focus it is today for fetish fans from around the world. And it’s the influence of this great city on that great photographer that is now celebrated in Helmut Newton: Berlin, Berlin, a new 244-page hardback from Taschen, with text by Matthias Harder, director of the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin.

In 1979, the newly relaunched German Vogue had commissioned Newton to retrace the footsteps of his youth to capture the fashion moment. The resulting portfolio, Berlin, Berlin!, inspired the title of the exhibition that celebrates 20 years of the Helmut Newton Foundation.

This collection includes Newton’s most iconic Berlin images, as well as many unknown shots from the 1930s to the 2000s: nightcrawlers in uber-cool clubs and restaurants, nude portraits in the boarding houses he knew from his youth, and the Berlin film scene, featuring Hanna Schygulla and Wim Wenders at the Berlin Wall, John Malkovich and David Bowie.

Helmut Newton: Berlin, Berlin (Taschen) , pages 134-135

In October 2003, only months before his death, Newton moved large parts of his archive to his new foundation, housed in the Museum of Photography beside the Zoologischer Garten station — the very station from which he’d fled Berlin in the winter of 1938. This publication thus closes a circle in the story of his extraordinary life and work.

If you’re visiting Berlin for the German Fetish Ball Weekend or any other reason, a visit to the Helmut Newton Foundation at the Museum für Fotografie, Jebensstrasse 2, D–10623 Berlin is highly recommended. In a city that is sadly not as affordable as it used to be, the €12 entrance fee (€6 concessions) is a genuine bargain! It’s worth a visit at any time, but if you want to catch the actual Berlin, Berlin: 20 Years of the Helmut Newton Foundation exhibition there, you’ll need to plan your visit for not later than February 16 2025.

Taschen’s Helmut Newton: Berlin, Berlin book (multilingual edition in English, French and German) is available from Taschen for £50. In the UK, the book is available for £44.85 from Amazon. Links below. All the images in this article are derived from promo shots of spreads from the book provided by Taschen.

Helmut Newton: Berlin, Berlin (Taschen) , pages 182-183

Helmut Newton: Berlin Berlin/Taschen
Helmut Newton: Berlin Berlin/Amazon UK
Helmut Newton Foundation/Berlin