Books: Berlin, Berlin

Helmut Newton hommage to his hometown. Berlin had an indelible influence on Helmut Newton and his photographic work. Many of his iconic images show the fascination he held for the city throughout his remarkable career from the 1930s to the 21st century. 

 

From nightcrawlers in uber-cool clubs, nude portraits in the old Berlin guesthouses of his youth, and the Berlin film scene. Born in Berlin in 1920, Helmut Newton trained as a teenager with legendary photographer Yva, following her lead into the enticing pastures of fashion, portraiture and nudes. Forced to flee the Nazis aged only 18, Newton never left Berlin behind. After his career exploded in Paris in the 1960s, he returned regularly to shoot for magazines like Constanze, Adam, Vogue, Condé Nast's Traveler, ZEITmagazin, Männer Vogue, Max and the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin as well as his own magazine Helmut Newton’s Illustrated.

Back in 1979, the newly relaunched German Vogue commissioned him to retrace the footsteps of his youth to capture the fashion moment. The resulting portfolio, Berlin, Berlin!, inspired the title of the exhibition which celebrates 20 years of the Helmut Newton Foundation. 

This collection includes Newton’s most iconic Berlin images, as well as many unknown shots from the 1930s to the 2000s: nightcrawlers in uber-cool clubs and restaurants, nude portraits in the boarding houses he knew from his youth, and the Berlin film scene, featuring Hanna Schygulla and Wim Wenders at the Berlin Wall, John Malkovich and David Bowie. 

 

Title: Berlin, Berlin

Author: Mathias Harder

Pages: 244, Hardcover

Edition Multilingual: English, French, German)

Publisher: Taschen