What does a fashion photographer as famous as Helmut Newton do when, as he told on-line magazine Salon... "I just had a bellyful and I realized I had shot enough nudes to last a lifetime"? One solution is to have a photo exhibition which opens the aperture on his and his partner's professional and private life together. Now showing at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, "Us and Them" casts a nostalgic glance at Newton's life with Alice Springs in front of and behind the camera. Described by American Vogue as "fashion's infamous provocateur," Newton rocked the fashion magazine world during the '60s and '70s and as recently as the late '90s with his displays of shocking eroticism and unabashed objectification of women. His portfolio includes shoots in French, British and American Vogues of man-eating naked women wearing chains and dog collars or models in wheelchairs and medical braces sporting the latest Chanel pumps. Newton's signature style also attracted the international jet set with Princess Caroline of Monaco, Karl Lagerfeld, Tina Chow, Gianni Versace and Catherine Deneuve to mention but a few queuing to go under his critical yet humorous gaze. However Newton's talent went beyond "shock value" images; his development of the "ring flash" lighting technique, where strong light reflected back from outer surfaces placed dark outlines arounds the subject, helped to define the look of much of the '70s. In 1947 when he was a fledgling photographer, he met an actress in Melbourne called June Browne. This is where the "Us" element of the exhibition comes into being. There are images of a young June posing "in character" for her various roles and being a muse for Newton. "Us" is less about collaboration than individual and artistic co-existence. They married in 1948, and in 1952 when Newton started working for French Vogue, they moved to Paris. Alice Springs, the pseudonym that Browne assumed when she started her own photography career, is perhaps less well known. She started taking her own photographs in 1970 after, she claims, receiving a three-hour course from Newton. She took photos exclusively of fashion and advertising until 1976 when she started focusing more on portraits. Her "Them" part of the exhibition is an interesting contrast to Newton's. Where, for example, he creates and manipulates a scene and places the subject in it, Springs allows the subject to show their own essence in the portrait. The differences that each of the photographers draws out of the "rich and famous" personalities reveal as much about the two photographers as it does of their respective subjects. An exhibition like "Us & Them," which bears witness to two creative personalities like the Newtons, is perhaps about the longevity of a society couple, a bit of late '90s soul searching or just their desire to be the subject. In an interview with Newsweek, June says, "It begun as Helmut's idea to exhibit the same people we both photographed over a long period of time. And then we added the self-portraits and the portraits we had taken of each other over 50 years." Indeed, "Us & Them" is not a retrospective of his or her greatest shots, but rather a testimony to Newton's and Springs' artistic life together and individually, a social rather than personal narrative of two extraordinary lives behind and in front of the omnipresent camera. |
