July, 2004 - Nr. 7
Permanent Helmut Newton exhibition opens in Berlin
TWIG - A permanent exhibition of the work of star photographer Helmut Newton opened this week in Berlin, the photographer’s childhood home. The event coincided with the grand opening of the new Museum for Photography, whose creation the artist had supported before his unexpected death last January.
After over five years of negotiations, Newton and his wife June last year gave the city of Berlin a collection of over 1,000 works to build a permanent exhibition in the new Museum for Photography, overseen by the umbrella organizations the Foundation for Prussian Cultural Property (SPK, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz). The new museum is located in a former art history library near the city’s Zoologischer Garten train station - a building which was the last that Newton saw before fleeing the city in 1938.
State Commissioner for Cultural and Media Affairs Christina Weiss officially opened the museum exhibition this week, calling it a library of sight and a forum for photography in all of its artistic themes and styles. The costs for the renovation of the building are being carried by the Newton Foundation.
A parallel exhibition features 75 of Newton’s famous Amazonian nudes in gigantic formats. "Helmut Newton: Sex and Landscapes" makes public the very subject that brought him his greatest praise and his most lasting scandal. A third exhibition, "Us and Them," presents Newton’s work alongside that of his wife June. Whereas Newton was known for his masterly crafted, dramatically staged photographs, June, who also worked under the pseudonym Alice Springs, was a skilled artist in her own right through the art of the snapshot.
Newton was born in Berlin in 1920, but fled the city and the Nazi regime in 1938, later becoming an Australian citizen. He went on to become one of the most respected and expensive fashion photographers ever.
He died January 23, 2004, of an apparent heart attack.
Republished with permission from "The Week in Germany"
Links:
Foundation
for Prussian Cultural Property, Museum for Photography
