The great anthology of Helmut Newton titled ‘Legacy’ arrives at Venice at The Photography Roomsproject of Cini and Marsilio Arte Foundation. Curated by Matthias Harder, director of Helmut Newton FoundationAnd Denis Curti, artistic director of the exhibition space onIsland of San Giorgio Maggiore, the exhibition chronologically traces the career of the German photographer. On display until November 24th, more than 250 images, 80 of which are unpublished, printed for the first time on the occasion of the initiative. The Helmut Newton Foundation allowed the curators, in fact, to access the photographer’s archives to tell his legacy in six chapters.
Born in Berlin on 31 October 1920 into a wealthy Jewish family, Helmut Neustadter was forced to leave Germany to escape Nazi persecution in 1938. In 1940 he was in Australia where he changed his surname from Neustadter to Newton and opened a small photography studio. In 1945 in Melbourne he met June Browne, aka Alice Springs, actress, photographer but, above all, muse, with whom he shared a long emotional and professional journey. The turning point in 1961 when he signed a contract with Vogue Paris to create fashion shoots. Newton moved with his wife to France where his creative genius ‘captured the spirit of the times’.
The exhibition itinerary starts from the beginnings in the 40s and 50s in Australia, told through archive material, magazines and books, and then analyzes three fundamental themes: fashion, portrait and nude. In particular, Newton manages to renew the vocabulary of fashion photography through the modality of storytelling. His shots are sequences of stories linked to crime news, art, noir literature, cinema. This is the case, for example, of the campaign for Yves Saint Laurent published in 1975 in Vogue Paris. The sequence, set in the red light district of Marais in Paris, portrays a modern, elegant and confident woman as she waits for someone in the darkness. In this enigmatic scene, Newton probably alludes to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s paintings dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century, in which ‘cocottes’ smoke while waiting for customers on the Pariser Platz in Berlin.
The shots on display highlight the photographer’s aptitude for capturing the continuous changes in society. This is the case, among others, of the image of the woman who, lying on the sofa, observes a shirtless man. In the section dedicated to portraits, Newton demonstrates his ability to capture the personalities of the artists photographed in one shot: from Gianni Versace to Andy Warhol, from Catherine Deneuve to Mick Jagger, from Nastassja Kinski to David Bowie.
