bLavish

Helmut Newton’s White Women, Sleepless Nights, and Big Nudes

July 20, 2011 | Posted by bLavish as Artsy Fartsy at 8:32 pm | Comments off

If you follow fashion or photography or art in general, then Helmut Newton is probably a name you know. He is one of the most famous fashion photographers of all time. As a teen, my walls were plastered with his images that I tore from the pages of Vogue.

White Women, Sleepless Nights, Big Nudes is giant exhibition that includes over 200 of his prints and is currently traveling the U.S. The show opened last week in Houston, but if you can’t make it to see in person, you should at least check out the exhibition catalog, which has contributions from the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Anna Wintour.

Newton, who died in 2004, survived Nazi Germany and went on to become one of the most eminent photographers of all time. His work is known for its sensual, if not outright titillating character. Newton expanded traditional notions of feminine beauty in his own way. To be precise, most of the women he photographed were traditionally beautiful, but in his images they were allowed to play out roles and fantasies that were somewhat transgressive.