Helmut Newton. Legacy
Le Stanze della Fotografia, Venice 
28th March 2024 - 24th November 2024
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curated by Matthias Harder and Denis Curti
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Helmut Newton. Legacy is the most complete exhibition of one of the most loved and discussed photographers of all time. With more than 250 photographs, polaroids and archive documents, the exhibition retraces through the decades the immense legacy left by Newton, an artist who always knew how to live up to his bad reputation. On the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, overlooking the splendid San Marco basin, the photographs suspended between water and sky further emphasize the elegant and bold style of the photographer. Among iconic images, a corpus of unpublished works that reveal the lesser-known aspects of the photographer’s work and specific insights into the most unconventional fashion shoots.
Helmut Newton, Elle. Parigi, 1967 © Helmut Newton Foundaon
Helmut Newton, Jerry Hall, Vogue America. Miami, 1974 © Helmut Newton Foundation
Helmut Newton, Autoritratto. Monte Carlo, 1993 © Helmut Newton Foundation
«His passage in the Lagoon is documented several times, as can be seen in the report for Queen magazine in 1966 or in the portrait of Anselm Kiefer, immortalized in a fascinating palace on the Grand Canal» says Matthias Harder, head of the Helmut Newton Foundation . «After having lived in Australia and the United States, Newton settled in Europe, first in Paris and then in Monte Carlo, intensifying his visits to Venice»
Matthias Harder, curator and president of thr Helmut Newton Foundation
Helmut Newton, the photographer
He was born in Berlin as Helmut Neustädter, but the world now knows him as Helmut Newton. Born on 31 October 1920 into a wealthy Jewish family, in 1938 he was forced to leave Germany due to the racial laws. He decides to embark for Australia, where he will open a small photography studio. In Melbourne he meets June Brown, stage name Alice Springs, actress and photographer and muse, with whom he will share an emotional and professional journey.
The exhibition
The title of the exhibition already evokes the immense legacy left to posterity which can be retraced, step by step, in the space of the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore. The exhibition recounts the career of a protagonist of the twentieth century who left a mark in fashion – as demonstrated by the collaborations with Vogue magazine and with stylists such as Yves Saint Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Thierry Mugler and Chanel – but also in the new way of approaching to the female nude, witnessed in his famous Big Nudes. The cult book from 1981 collects 39 black and white shots, many present in the exhibition, pioneers of a frontier of photography not yet explored, that of blow-ups and human-sized shots. Suspended between water and sky, Newton’s shots in Venice further emphasize the photographer’s elegant and bold style.
Newton’s legacy will be told in six chronological chapters: the beginnings of the 1940s and 1950s in Australia, the 1960s in France, the 1970s in the United States, the 1980s between Monte Carlo and Los Angeles and numerous reports around the world of the nineties.
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