During his lifetime, Helmut Newton’s erotic photographs of women earned him the sobriquet “king of kink.”
In 2003, about a year before he died, he photographed for Vogue a model wearing nothing but a pair of fishnet-heeled black pumps while cleaning out a fireplace. That may not raise a lot of eyebrows in this century, but Newton began pushing against boundaries in the ’60s and ’70s.
An exhibition of Newton’s work that opened Saturday at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles underscores his legacy not as a much-imitated photographer who generated controversy over his portrayal of women and choice of sexually laced themes, but as a cultural provocateur who challenged the norm.
“Helmut Newton: White Women/Sleepless Nights/Big Nudes” culls highlights from the photographer’s first three books, “White Women,” “Sleepless Nights” and “Big Nudes,” and blows up the photos – in some cases, up to 6 feet tall. The exhibition has appeared in Rome, Houston and Berlin before landing in Century City.
Newton didn’t exploit women, said David Fahey, co-owner of the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, which has showcased Newton’s works for decades. Rather, he admired them and celebrated them. His influence is evident in other contemporary art forms such as film and music, Fahey said.
Newton’s effect on pop culture can be seen in the pages of Madonna’s racy “Sex” coffee table book in 1992 and in Stanley Kubrick’s last film, “Eyes Wide Shut.”
In 2010, Mario Testino photographed Tina Fey, who was dressed in a short black ensemble topped with Disney mouse ears on the balcony of a New York building for Vogue. It was an homage to Newton’s iconic 1975 portrait of Elsa Peretti, who wore a strapless black Halston costume and rabbit ears a la Playboy bunny.
“If Newton’s work was controversial, I believe it’s because he expressed the contradictions within all of us, and particularly within the women he photographed so beautifully: empowerment mixed with vulnerability, sensuality tempered by depravity,” said Wallis Annenberg, CEO of the Annenberg Foundation, in a statement. “Newton deepened our understanding of changing gender roles, of the ways in which beauty creates its own kind of power and corruption.”
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