Playboy: Helmut Newton
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video
Playboy: Helmut Newton Details
From Publishers Weekly It's no surprise that Helmut Newton shot stylishly soft-core "pictorials" for Playboy for nearly 30 years. After all, Newton's fashion photography was famous for its dark eroticism, its suggestion of dominance and submission amid the silk and heels of Vogue and Elle. But it is surprising to realize that most of the 160 images collected in this volume fall substantially short of Newton's best work. Though Hefner's foreword rightly observes that Newton "used his fashion photographer's eye to make the erotic almost surrealistic" and that his centerfolds were "curiously unsettling," a great erotic shot requires not only artistic skill and vision, but also a suitable model. And Newton's fetishistic vision didn't always mix well with the demeanor of the typical Playmate. As Abish notes in his excellent introduction, "the unfeeling female of [Newton's] imagination is a familiar icon of the Berlin cabaret." She descends from Marlene Dietrich, not Marilyn Monroe. In the series where Newton got the right models for his vision—Kristine De Bell in "200 Motels," Nastassja Kinski in "Kinski Exposed," Uschi Obermaier in "Bed and Board"—the results are hot and haunting. In ones where he didn't, the results may be unusually stylish for Playboy, but they aren't much compared to Newton's better work—a distinction that will hardly keep most Playboy fans from wearing out the pages of this book. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Read more About the Author Helmut Newton was born in Berlin in 1920. His family fled to Australia in 1938, where Newton served in the army and began work as a photographer. He died in Los Angeles on January 23, 2004.Gary Cole has been photography director of Playboy since 1975.Hugh M. Hefner is editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine.Walter Abish is the winner of an Award of Merit Medal from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His most recent book is Double Vision: A Self-Portrait . Read more
Reviews
Growing up in the 60's with Hugh Hefner and Playboy, I was aware of the work of Helmut but only recently did I read his biography. I just had to have this book. It met and exceeded my expectations.