Not the best example of Newton's work!!
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I like Helmut Newton's work. It's surreal and sexy. Bit I was very disappointed with this offering.
I would say that I have found that lots of books published post the photographers death generally do not live up to the work they do when they are alive. It's a generalisation I know but it seems that if they were about to edit the book they would do it differently.
In this case I bought the book to look at Newton's overall work but in effect this is a fashion book showing work he has done for Vogue et al. Ok the pictures are nice, but then again I am sure that Helmut Newton would see that as an insult. Nice isn't always artistic and Newton's surreal photography in the later part of his life id so much better then his run-of-the-mill fashion shoots.
In conclusion, if you are looking for a fashion book this is the book for you. If you are looking for a book which shows Helmu'ts unusual and radical photography however, then put this one back on the shelf.
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Woman as an idolized goddess again...
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The Christianity and even more the Islam have abolished to idolize woman as a goddess. However this was the daily use in the Greek, Roman and Egyptian religion (sorry to remember, that the Aztecs tore the heart of young virgins out of the live body). Newton has reversed this development - he told us, to idolize women again. I visited the Helmut Newton exhibition A GUN FOR HIRE in the "Museum for Photography" in Berlin, near the Station ZOO, Jebens-Street 2. Sometimes I thought Newton is cynical, contemptuous against women, emphasizes the power struggle between the sexes too much. After the reading of his autobiography I thought: "What a humorous, witty person! " After having the pleasure to watch the film of his wife on his work, I thought, oh God, I get dizzy by this hand-held shaking camera. After the reading of the museum catalogue A GUN FOR HIRE I always get quiet again. Newton was skilful. He regarded himself as A GUN FOR HIRE self ironically, as an unfortunately rentable killer because of the kind money. But if he had carried out a banal "killer" order with the necessary simple, most childish aesthetics guidelines for any fashion magazine, showing the models in a predefined wardrobe sales beneficially - then he afterwards extended the dialog with a lady in most cases after completion of this obedient work for the capitalist system of the chewing fan heating - then he enlarged the dialog into the direction of more human, erotic, adult and no longer infantile situations, real and no more prudishly, running free experimenting for new emotion and aura. The growing picture collection from the vermiform appendix after that official work peeled out that image, that unique art form, which everyone connects now with the name Helmut Newton - a milestone in the history of photography. Before the visit of the exhibition A GUN FOR HIRE (in the long night of the museums in Berlin, January 2006) I went astray in that nightmare of holocaust stele field in Berlin. Newton had managed to escape from the insanity of the Third Reich. Newton's work could have never resulted under the thumb of any ideology. At first in the private, thereupon in a society, where is the liberty to make something new, it was possible for him, to make what could correctly be described as "making a woman to an idolized goddess" again. A GUN FOR HIRE is the reminding bequest which, shortly before his death, he bequeathed to that town which had dropped him 1938. I hope, that Berlin people (and many more) will awake and learn, what he wanted to show...
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