When I think of Helmut Newton, porno chic immediately springs to mind. Indeed, the most controversial photographer of the 20th century changed fashion photography forever, bringing fashion and sex together in a new style called “porno chic”.
Preferring to work in natural settings, he loved having fun with vulgar imagery. Provocative scenarios, crude lighting and shocking compositions quickly became his trademark in the polite world of fashion photography.
Until August 28, Galerie Acte2 presents “Three Boys From Pasadena: A Tribute to Helmut Newton“, organized by June Newton (Alice Springs), the photographer’s own wife. The exhibition brings together the work of three photographers who have accompanied Helmut’s career since 1979: Mark Arbeit, George Holz and Just Loomis, whose work can be seen at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin.
Mark Arbeit, George Holz and Just Loomis first met Helmut Newton in 1979, when they were students at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. The three became Helmut Newton’s assistants during the most exciting and prolific period of“Newtonian Photography“. For over thirty years, they remained in constant contact, sharing their personal work and friendship with the Newton couple. After Helmut’s death, it was June who conceptualized the term “Three Boys from Pasadena”.
Wishing to honor the relationship between the couple and the three boys, and as a tribute to the bond that has united them all these years, she becomes an ambassador for their work and will build this exhibition with them. More than a tribute, this exhibition is an opportunity to show the master’s influence on the work of each of them.
George Holz is certainly the one whose influence on his work is most perceptible. The photographer aims for aestheticism in the choice of model, in the composition of the photo and in its treatment. For over thirty years, he has worked on nudes, fashion and portraits. For this exhibition, the photographer proposes exclusively variations on the female nude in black and white.
From a nude in motion and very graphic, he moves very easily to a kind of nonchalance presenting languid, almost abandoned women, up to the ultimate image of a disembodied woman through plays of light and shadow, so close to the real dolls photographed by Helmut Newton. Always with the idea of body language, George Holz plays with the image of the woman, who becomes an animal-vegetal woman carrying a turtle carcass, surrounded by deer antlers.
Just Loomis works much more on emotions and everyday life. He offers us a series of photographs of deepest America, in color or black and white. And his photographs are strikingly truthful, like the ultimate snapshot of life: situations, places, faces all part of the American West. But far from being stolen, these slices of life are offered to us, so generous are they. They become fascinating when we are confronted with the captivating, disturbingly intense gazes of this deep America, such as this photograph of the burned man.
Challenge, anger, fear, mischief, disbelief, no emotion is spared. Just Loomis captures these moments at their best, with the people photographed in their element, offering us their truth. Through their eyes, they seem to speak to us, saying: “Look at me, show me what you want to show me”. As for the colors in these photographs, they are never aggressive; on the contrary, they remain soft and benevolent, with a predominance of blue.
Mark Arbeit is one of the world’s most conceptual light artists. Both Helmut Newton’s spiritual son and Irving Penn’s assistant, his work is also the expression of a powerful body language in which the woman is very often reduced to the expression of a body, the face remaining naturally hidden by the staging or with the aid of artifice.Anthurium Hat is a brilliant example, in which the plant dresses the woman, who disappears behind the plant.
The women’s legs are often spread, a bit like an offering. His work is infinitely technical, with its emphasis on symmetry and geometric figures. But once again, the woman seems to be disembodied, as Mark Arbeit lets the viewer’s mind follow its own meanderings through a series entitled“In and Out of focus“, in which he manipulates blur with exemplary dexterity. The photographer also offers us some photographs from his“Artist’s Studio” series, in which he photographed nude women in the studios of well-known Parisian artists, demonstrating his perfect mastery of light.
But the highlight of the exhibition is the wall of memorabilia from the three photographers, including photographs taken during shoots with Helmut Newton among others, correspondence, faxes, backstage fashion editorial sessions… It is with this painting that we really understand what united these men with their mentor, the complexity of the relationship between them and their emulation.
This wall alone sums up what this exhibition is all about: how, years after Helmut Newton’s death, his spiritual sons are perpetuating the master’s style while retaining their own identity. And it’s a perfect success, to say the least.
Photo credits: ©with the courtesy of Acte2 gallery.
Acte2 Gallery
41 rue d’Artois 25008 Paris
tel: +33 1 42 89 50 05
www.acte2photo.Com
Marie-Odile Radom
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