Press release_Ausstellung ´Helmut Newton ... - Nadine Dinter PR

The Helmut Newton Foundation presents
The Museum of Fine Arts Houston show:
'HELMUT NEWTON:
WHITE WOMEN / SLEEPLESS NIGHTS / BIG NUDES'
Press conference:
Opening:
Friday, June 1 st , 2012, 11 am
Friday, June 1 st , 2012, 8 pm
Duration: June 2 nd - November 18 th , 2012
Helmut Newton, They are coming, Paris 1981, © Helmut Newton Estate
On June 1 st , 2012 the new Helmut Newton exhibition will be opened under the title 'White
Women / Sleepless Nights / Big Nudes'.
Originally conceived for and presented at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, this exhibition at the
Helmut Newton Foundation is dedicated to Newton’s first three legendary publications. The motifs
published in the books have been transformed into exhibition prints. During Newton’s lifetime,
these photographs bordering between fashion and nude photography were never displayed
together.

His first photography book, White Women, was published when Newton was already 56 years
old, in 1976. The book received the Kodak Photobook Award shortly thereafter and has enjoyed
numerous reprints ever since. In White Women, Newton used nudity within the visual world of
fashion. While such unusual pictures both astonished and provoked the scene, above all, they
revolutionized fashion photography. Furthermore, Newton’s photographs both reflect and
comment on the transformation of the role of women in western society at the time. Inevitably,
Newton makes us observers into voyeurs.
Just as perfectly arranged were the black and white and color photographs in Newton’s 1978
book Sleepless Nights. Previously published in various magazines, these were also all about
women, their bodies and their clothes; fashion shots that are simultaneously portraits, or which
could double as crime scene documentation photos. Here for the first time are also three smaller
series, which would later be counted among Newton’s iconic images: half-naked, female models
in orthopedic body braces or wearing leather saddles by Hermès, as well as the so-called
“dummies.” His second publication Sleepless Nights also features mannequins that are mostly in
amorous combination with a person. For Helmut Newton, fashion often seems to be an excuse to
realize something different and very individual.
At the latest with his third publication Big Nudes, Helmut Newton had secured his seat atop the
Mount Olympus of photography. Since its first publication in 1981, the book has been reprinted
thousands of times, by several publishing houses and in multiple languages. Soon after their
creation the monumental pictures were shown in various museums; with his Big Nudes and the
subsequent life-sized images from his Naked and Dressed series, Newton had opened up a new
dimension of the photographic human image.
In parallel to the exhibition 'Helmut Newton: White Women / Sleepless Nights / Big Nudes' the
Dutch photographer Jan de Wit will be presenting his show 'Journey to the Past' in June´s
Room; featuring photographs from a shared trip with Helmut Newton through Brandenburg and to
the Baltic Sea, in 1999, tracing Newtons childhood.
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