Galery

1

"I love vulgarity. I am very attracted by bad taste – it is a lot more exciting than that supposed good taste which is nothing more than a standardized way of looking at things." These are the words of Helmut Newton - the photographer who has turned the nudes into his philosophy.

A representative example of the "handwriting" of the photographer who has redefined fashion photography will be presented in his first retrospective exhibition in Greece.

Helmut Newton’s photographs reveal the beauty, sensuality, humour and violence, which he felt in the behaviour of the participants in the fashion industry. His photographic works, which are often shocking, present luxury, money and power in a typical way. He claimed,"When I photograph faces, I captivate and entertain them."
 
Along with Irving Penn, Richard Avendan and Herb Ritz, Helmut Newton changed all that was custom in fashion photography in the 1960s. They give it a sophisticated and artistic dimension, where the superiority of elegance and the desire for challenge combine in parallel.

"Some photographers produce art. I don’t claim to produce art. I’ve always worked on commission," is one of Helmut Newton’s verbal motives. He harshly criticizes the advertising, commercialization and exploitation of the nude female body in the name of unbridled consumerism and corrupting the consumer audience.

According to the curators, the exhibition presents the main themes of his work: the fashion, the nudes, the portrait, the sex, the humour. It includes 196 colour and black and white photographs of all the major themes of his work, such as the series "A gun for Hire, Fired", "Villa d 'Este", "Habillé / Déshabillé" and "Domestic Nudes" as well as many portraits of representatives of the fashion and entertainment industry.

The height of 21 of the photographs is more than two metres. The well-known large female bodies that make up a thematic group created in the period 1980 - 1993 with brief interruptions could be distinguished among them.

The photographer's life was more than turbulent, full of ups and downs until his death in 2004, when he died in a road accident at the age of 84. Born in Berlin in 1920, he immigrated to Australia with his parents on the eve of World War II. He opened his own studio in Sydney and began working for the fashion bible Vogue.

In 1958, he moved to Paris and began creating his unique style while working for the most prestigious fashion magazines in Europe and the USA.

The images that Newton created in those years are filled with provocative eroticism. Women, protagonists in his photographs, are turned into fetishes, a symbol of the author’s unbridled imagination mixed with indomitable passion.

The exhibition takes place in cooperation with the Helmut Newton Foundation, which the photographer himself founded in Berlin a year before his death. An educational programme will be held within its context. It includes an interactive tour of the exhibition with the active participation of students and a workshop, where they will create their works. The programme is intended for students in the first class of high school and each time, it will be adapted according to the age of the students and the dynamics of each group. The programme will start from the middle of November and will continue until the end of February 2013.

The photographs will be on display from 13 November to 3 March, 2013 at the Cultural Centre of the Onassis Foundation "Shelter of Letters and Arts" (107, Syngrou Avenue, Athens).