There is no doubt that Helmut Newton is one of the foremost photographers of the 20th century; his inimitable fashion and nude photographs and portraits continue to be shown to this day.
His first photography book, White Women, was published when Newton was already 56 years old, in 1976, in several editions and languages. The now legendary book received the Kodak Photobook Award shortly thereafter and has enjoyed numerous reprints ever since. With White Women Newton made a particular impact by paving the way for the visual eroticization of fashion; this culminated in 1980/1981 with his famous series Big Nudes and Naked and Dressed. The unconventional idea of presenting contemporary fashion with clothed as well as unclothed models in diptychs was something he was already working on in the mid-1970s. A notable example for this may be found in European art history: Goya’s landscape format paintings of the naked and clothed Maja from around 1800, which hang next to one another in the Prado. Newton’s challenging notion of a radical nudity in fashion (or better, at the edges of fashion) was later followed by numerous fellow photographers as well as a film director: the final scene of Robert Altman’s 1994 film Prêt-à-Porter depicts fashion models in Paris parading down the catwalk completely nude, and, despite some initial skepticism, enthralling the public.
Foregoing the clothes to focus on the (female) body that fashion actually shrouds was likely inspired by the Newtonian leitmotif that had by then become well known. Equally sophisticated and perfectly arranged are the black and white and color photographs in Newton’s 1978 book Sleepless Nights. Previously published in various magazines such as the US or Italian Vogue, Playboy or Spiegel, these are also all about women, their bodies and their clothes; fashion shots that are simultaneously portraits, or which could double as crime scene documentation photos.
During Newton’s lifetime, these photographs bordering between fashion and nude photography were never displayed together.