Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/111120
Newton���s Law A new book spotlights legendary photographer Helmut Newton���s most provocative work. COPYRIGHT HELMUT NEWTON ESTATE BY BRANDON PALAS T he prolific German-Australian photographer Helmut Newton purchased his first camera when he was 12 years old and instantly fell in love with the medium that would provide his entr��e into the beau monde. His erotically charged, fetishistic, black-and-white images of Amazonian supermodels and glittering socialites defined an era in fashion and exploded antiquated distinctions between art and commercial photography. He was a true iconoclast with an eye for beauty and a taste for the louche life. ���My job as a photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain,��� said Newton, who died on January 23, 2004, in a car accident at the Chateau Marmont hotel in 56 BAL HARBOUR An image by Helmut Newton for French Vogue shot in Dakar, 1971. Los Angeles, a place fittingly associated with celebrity and scandal. Taschen���s World Without Men captures the late artist���s most provocative, tantalizing images from his formative years to his ascendance among photography���s elite, a period that covers the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. The book is accompanied by Newton���s own journal entries describing the mise-en-scene and delicious details of each shoot. Taken as a whole, this intoxicating compendium supplies ample, eloquent evidence of the groundbreaking vision that secured Newton his place in the firmament of modern photography. To understand the enormous influence he exerted, one need only flip through the pages of today���s leading fashion magazines, all of which owe a debt to the master���s fearless sensibility and unerring eye. BH