Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton explores how women in Western society changed at the end of the 1970s in an exhibit of photographs from his legendary volumes, including White Women from 1976, at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.

The collection includes 200 images in which the Magnum photographer presents nudes using the aesthetics of fashion photography, resulting in images that are so surprising and provocative that they revolutionized the concept of fashion photography and became a testament to the transformation of the role of women in a fast-changing society.

His Sleepless Night (1979) series focuses on women, their bodies and the clothes that they wear.  These are photographs that, while initially and essentially fashion shots, little by little transform into documents that reflect an era. The body of work, retrospective in character, collects in its pages works created by Newton for various magazines, including Vogue. 

Included in the exhibit are photographs published in the volume Big Nudes (1981), with which Newton achieved international recognition as a top photographer of his time. These images depict models outside of the studio, striking sensual poses in the street.

Among the photographs are a portrait of Andy Warhol posing in the same position as a statue of the Madonna in a Tuscan church, an image of Nastassja Kinski resembling Marlene Dietrich, holding a doll and the image of a woman in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Info: exhibit ends July 21