From The Archives: Newton, Riviera At Villa Sauber In Monaco
About two years ago I visited Newton, Riviera at Villa Sauber (part of the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco) in the Principality of Monaco.
I have been loving photography since I was seven years old, when I started using a disposable Kodak during school trips, and this passion has grown with me over the years; Newton, Riviera was one of the best exhibitions about photography I have ever attended.
The German-born photographer already had ties with the French Riviera when he first arrived in Monaco in 1981. He was also a regular at the annual Cannes Film Festival and would spend his summers in Ramatuelle with his wife June.
Moving to Monaco at the age of 61, he was already established as one of the greatest fashion photographers of his generation; the period from 1981 until his death in 2004 was one of the most interesting and productive of his career.
Monaco was the ideal setting for Newton’s fashion photographs. The city’s landmarks have often served as backdrop for fashion campaigns and this also gave Newton the chance to take numerous portraits of iconic people like David Bowie, Paloma Picasso and Michael Cimino; some of them were Monaco residents while others were just visiting the city.
He also worked on a series of photographs with stars of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo and the princely family, especially Princess Caroline, a close friend of his.
In Monaco, Newton was fascinated by the elegant way of life and immersed himself in a world of appearances and glamour in which he was both an actor and a privileged witness.
Helmut Newton shared my passion for swimming and the allure of swimming pools, which I also deeply appreciate. Like painter David Hockney, he was fascinated by the shimmering blue water of the pools that conveyed fantasies of well-being and luxury. He shot a large number of images involving swimming pools, which soon became one of the key elements in his photographic universe. He sometimes switched from photographing the swimming pools of villas or hotels in the French Riviera to capturing the beauty of the Mediterranean Sea, even though the latter didn’t have the same appeal and often served as a simple background in his photos. Newton was rather the photographer of artificial things, as he once declared: “The most beautiful lawn is plastic.”
The 1960s and 1970s are now considered the golden age of fashion photography, thanks to the advent of ready-to-wear clothing. This gave photographers a huge amount of work and some of them began to lead a lavish lifestyle, like the character of Thomas in Michelangelo Antonioni’s movie Blow Up (1966).
In the same years, Newton bought an apartment in Paris and a mansion in Ramatuelle, where he used to stay with his wife every summer, from June to August. He took a lot of photographs of June and their friends while staying there.
When he later settled in Monaco, he quickly turned the city into an entire setting for his images: terraces, hotels, construction sites and garages were the perfect background for an amazing series of photographs he took in the ‘80s, especially for Versace. He often imposed his point of view on clients, because Monaco freed him from constraints and gave him “carte blanche” to fully develop his vision. However, he also maintained the style he was known for and a taste for staging that didn’t include spontaneity. His years in Monaco were definitely the most creative and prolific of his career.
The Ballets de Monte-Carlo are considered the heirs of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, which revolutionized dance at the beginning of the 20th century.
Newton was invited by H.R.H. Princess Caroline of Hanover to photograph the company’s dancers; this collaboration began in 1985 and continued over the years. Newton portrayed the company’s soloists in images typical of his style that were used to illustrate the ballet programs, focusing on the dancers’ plasticity rather than their movements.
Helmut Newton’s fashion photographs have been so successful that they have largely eclipsed the rest of his work. Nonetheless, his most personal images are sometimes the most interesting. They reveal a deep-rooted photographic culture and they are reminiscent of classical painting; they often represent a re-appropriation of Surrealism, and its themes like the mirror, the eye, the mannequin and the night (the latter being considered an artistic practice by many Surrealists like Bataille and Brassai).
I had a great time attending the Newton, Riviera retrospective, which also included a documentary about Newton, a commercial film shot for Lampo Lanfranchi in Milan (whose cold nuances reminded me of David Lynch’s aesthetics) and the reconstruction of Helmut Newton’s French Riviera studio.
The allure of his work is captivating, evoking a bygone era of decadence and glamour that made me feel profoundly inspired. Upon returning from a trip to Berlin, one of my friends spoke highly of the Helmut Newton Foundation (Museum of Photography) in Newton's hometown. I encourage you to consider a visit, especially if you reside in Berlin or have plans to travel there soon.