11/19/2023 0 Comments Helmut newton mannequin![]() ![]() ![]() Arguably, this is probably the reason why so many people can walk through the exhibition without having a fit of moral righteousness. Some of the pictures are quite sexually explicit, but they are never sexy due to this awkwardness. This becomes a part of the distance between what is depicted and the viewer. Even though many of the pictures show people when they’re undressed, or vulnerable in other ways (like the portrait of an aging Salvador Dalí) there is always an awkward undertone, either in the pose or the eyes. This is mostly created through the nature of his style. You get to see the artistic development: who he knew, who he worked with, his relationship to his wife and his relationship to the body. Everything is set up in such a pedagogical way that it becomes almost clinical. The goal for the curator is to create a relationship to, and an understanding towards, an artist. I've seen his work, but I can't say that he has in any way had an impact on either my sense of aesthetics or my life. My relationship to Helmut Newton is very limited. In the same room there is also Sie Kommen (Naked and Dressed) (1981), four women in two pictures, one naked and one dressed in the same poses. The rest of the exhibition contains large black and white prints of naked women staring directly at the viewer. The documentary Helmut by June (2007) runs in a smaller room, where you are invited to see an intimate portrait directed by his widow June Newton/Alice Springs. You see people walking through the exhibition that kind of ignore the nudity, Nazi-memorabilia and sadomasochism. Fotografiska tries to present Newton to “the people”, that’s for certain. His work from the 60’s seems to be more colorful and more youthful, and then moves into a darker and more contradictory world. ![]() When entering the exhibition at Fotografiska, the visitor is greeted by a large room holding many of his fashion photos from the 60’s and up until the 90’s. But he always plays with the concept of the faceless model or mannequin, and the concept of plasticity. During this time, most fashion photography used the model as an almost faceless mannequin in the confinement of a studio, while Newton created characters that told stories to evoke the imagination of a certain type of life or lifestyle in authentic settings, and with whatever light was available. During the 60’s he would use provocative ingredients and create layered narratives to play on the conventions of fashion photography. When working with different fashion and lifestyle magazines like Vogue, Elle, Queen, Stern, and Nova, among others, Newton always held on to his own perspective. Springs became a successful photographer in her own right, but she was also Newton’s editor, curator and confidante. She later took on the name Alice Springs in 1970, which derived from the Australian town with the same name. She first performed under the stage name of June Brunell. In 1948 he married the Australian actress June Browne. In 1945 he got a British passport and changed his last name the following year to Newton, from Neustädter. Newton’s family left Germany before the outbreak of World War II and fled to South America in 1938. He started photographing at 12, when he got his first camera while working for a photographer. Helmut Newton was born in Berlin in 1920. With the ongoing exhibition Helmut Newton at Fotografiska in Stockholm, it becomes interesting to look closer at this photographer, artist and, in his own words, pornographer, even though the museum would only like to see the word as a mere provocation. There is an air of fetishistic desire in Helmut Newton’s work that creates a limbo between almost detached fashion photography and an aggressive sexuality. ![]()
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