Playboy Helmut Newton

Following "Playboy's" celebrated 50th anniversary "Photographs" and "Cartoons" comes an arresting retrospective of Helmut Newton, one of the 20th century's most influential photographers. 150+ photos in color and b&w.

This book gets its name from 60 unusually dark and cryptic photographs. When Newton opened his "Archives of the Night" in the 90's, gloomy images emerged like flocks of bats. His famous "Domestic Nudes" appeared in pairs and tableaus together with sinister landscapes. Palace architecture was displayed next to morbid vanitas paintings as were bodies cut open from an anatomical museum of wax figures, placed on show alongside a portrait of a Dracula star putting on his make-up. With the Archives, Newton, who decided on the placement of these works himself, showed us his dark side. But at the same time, he was amusing himself with grey areas - also typical for Newton. The juxtaposition of seemingly disparate motifs created new and enigmatic relationships that oscillate between satire and poetry, brutality and gentleness, irony and pathos.

The collection 'Sex & Landscapes' brings together a rich selection from Helmut Newton’s little-known landscape and travel photographs, as well as unseen 'tougher' sex pictures, described by Philippe Garner of de Pury & Luxembourg as Helmut’s world of dark, brooding seas, baroque statuary, crashing waves, a long desert highway under threatening skies, a Berlin park at dusk, enigmatic apartment buildings at night, the Rhine seen from the air, the shadows of airplanes, all this interwoven with hard and voyeuristic sexual imagery, plus a touch of his high style and glamour. The book’s publication coincides with the exhibition of 'Sex and Landscapes', which will open on June 3 at the inauguration of the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin.

White Women, Helmut Newton's legendary first work, appeared more than twenty years ago. With it's superior mixture of aesthetics, technical perfection and bourgeois decadence it has lost nothing of its potency and attractiveness. Newton's work encompasses a wealth of themes, also embodying facets of the mass-media world of glamour, masquerade and show. Using subtle, yet striking images—like those of Paloma Picasso, Veruschka, Elsa Peretti, Karl Lagerfeld, David Hockney, and Charlotte Rampling—Newton embraces the delicate, natural beauty of the naked female body. White Women is a masterpiece of erotic visual literature.

Les polaroïds occupent une place à part dans le cœur de nombreux amoureux de la photographie qui se souviennent d'une époque où "le cliché instantané" signifiait une épreuve unique développée quelques minutes après avoir appuyé sur le déclencheur. Ce qui était autrefois un outil indispensable pour les photographes, leur permettant de tester leur composition avant d'imprimer la pellicule, a été rendu obsolète par la photographie numérique. Heureusement pour nous, le grand photographe Helmut Newton a conservé ses polaroïds, nous offrant l'occasion rare et privilégiée de voir la genèse d'un choix de ses plus belles images étalées sur plusieurs décennies et dont bon nombre ont été publiées par TASCHEN dans les albums SUMO, A Gun for Hire et Work. Rassemblées par sa veuve June Newton, ces images capturent la magie des séances de prises de vue d'Helmut Newton comme seuls les polaroïds peuvent le faire. -- Quatrième de couv.

A collection of celebrity portraits--of figures including Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Anthony Burgess, Brassai, Sophia Loren, Julian Schnabel, and Grace Jones--by the eminent and provocative photographer