Helmut Newton's Hot Takes

A coffee-table book and exhibition re-create a 1999 album of the photographer’s most experimental work, collecting never-before-seen images and their handwritten pencil annotations By Carolina de Armas H elmut Newton needs no introduction. But we’ll give him one anyway. He was born Helmut Neustädter in Berlin in 1920 to a Jewish family. His father owned a button factory, which the Nazis took from him in the 1930s. After Kristallnacht, in 1938, Helmut’s parents fled to Argentina while he waited for his passport. Within a month, he was able to hop a ship to China, which ended up in Singapore; the authorities there sent him to Australia, where he enlisted in the army. After the war, Neustädter returned to Melbourne, changed his surname to Newton, set up a photography studio, and married his life partner June Browne, an actress better known by her stage name, Alice Springs. Newton began shooting theater and fashion, and did industrial photography. READ ON