Tag Archives: Irving Penn

HELMUT NEWTON — THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL

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It’s great to be a provocateur. That’s what the world needs, this provocation. It stimulates thought and it stimulates ideas. It stimulates all kinds of conversations that don’t really have anything to do with the man himself. And who cares about the man himself? We’re looking at his art. — Charlotte Rampling

He was a little bit pervert, but so am I so it’s okay. — Grace Jones

I do consider myself a feminist, but I do consider the expression of machismo as an expression of a culture. Now, of course, Helmet wasn’t simply macho—it was more complicated than that—but he does look at a woman as a sexual object, and also an attraction and an anger toward her… It was actually extraordinary that Helmut was accepted by the industry because he was much more dangerous—much more ambiguous and frightening—than an Avedon or a Penn… Helmut photographed women the way Leni Riefenstahl photographed men. — Isabella Rossellini

Susan Sontag: As a woman, I find your photos very misogynist. For me it’s very unpleasant.

Bernard Pivot: You find him unpleasant?

Sontag: Yes. Not the man, the work… I never thought the man would look like the work. To the contrary. Even if you live through your work, you can be nice. I don’t expect a person to look like their work. Especially when it’s about fantasies and dreams.

Helmut Newton: I love women. There is nothing I love more.

Sontag: A lot of misogynist men say that. I am not impressed.

Newton: I swear—

Sontag: I’m sorry, I don’t think this is the truth. There’s an objective truth. The master adores his slave. The executioner loves his victim. A lot of misogynist men say they love women, but show them in a humiliating way.

Helmut actually loved strong women. — Nadja Auermann

When you’re 20 years old, 1.80 meters tall with blonde hair, you feel like a hunted deer. And Helmut Newton’s pictures made me stronger. I controlled the situation. I wasn’t the deer. I was equal to the hunter. I could decide what to do. I think a lot of people misunderstood that. — Sylvia Gobbel

I was very shy; I’d just turned 17. There was never a moment where I felt uncomfortable. I was just an amazing experience where I walked away saying, “This man is incredible.” He had a sort of twinkle in his eye—nothing serious, everything understated and very witty… Definitely, when I look at the pictures, it’s not me. It’s his imagination… I love the fact that I can be this different, through his lens.— Claudia Schiffer

I think he was Weimar. That’s how I think of him—connected to Brecht and Weill and George Grosz, that wonderful period of German Expressionism—that was Helmut. — Marianne Faithfull

Berlin for him was the very best of the Weimar Republic. Everything is possible, everything is allowed… What he liked about me was my guttersnipe style. I was not the usual elegant glamorous woman, but rather I had a portion of originality that comes from the lower classes of society. I suppose he also really like the eroticism of maids… It’s related to this Berlin period. — Hanna Schygulla

I loved my parents, they were great—very different influence on me. My mother was a very spoiled woman and quite hysterical in many ways, but pretty wonderful. And she encouraged me very much to become a photographer. My father was horrified by the idea. “You take pictures on the weekend for a hobby, my boy. You’ll end up in the gutter, my boy.” He was right, I did. But I had a good time in the gutter. — Helmut Newton*

The aesthetic of Helmut Newton—whose era is more distant from us now than the inspirational Weimar years were to Newton’s 1970s heyday—still provokes and intrigues, even in our less frivolous times.

In the excellent new documentary feature HELMUT NEWTON—THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL—now streaming on Kino Lorber’s Kino Marquee—filmmaker Gero von Boehm captures the great photographer’s obsession with the female form pushed to the edge of submission or absolute triumph.

HELMUT NEWTON—THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL

Laemmle, Los Angeles.

Lumiere Cinema at the Music Hall, Los Angeles.

*Quotations and dialog from Gero von Boehm, Helmut Newton—The Bad and the Beautiful, courtesy of the filmmaker, Kino Lorber, and Nadja Auermann, Marianne Faithfull, Sylvia Gobbel, Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling, Isabella Rossellini, Claudia Schiffer, and Hanna Schygulla. Susan Sontag segment originally from Apostrophes, 1979.

Helmut Newton, from top: Grace Jones and Dolph Lundgren, Los Angeles, 1985; Gero von Boehm, Helmut Newton—The Bad and the Beautiful (2020), still, Grace Jones; Grace Jones; Helmut Newton—The Bad and the Beautiful, still, Isabella Rossellini; David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini, Los Angeles, 1988; Faye Dunaway, 1987, Vanity Fair cover shoot; Charlotte Rampling, Arles, 1973; Paloma Picasso, St. Tropez, 1973; Elsa Peretti in Halston Bunny Costume, 1975; Newton in Berlin in the 1930s (2), shortly before leaving Germany; A Cure for a Black Eye, Jerry Hall, 1974; Alice Springs and Newton, Us and Them (Helmut and June Newton). Images courtesy and © the Helmut Newton Foundation, June Newton, Gero von Boehm, Lupa Film, and Kino Lorber.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MY MOTHER

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I live in a world now where everything is “delegated” to photography. Nothing is left to memory, your own memory. What I’m interested in, instead, are things that can’t be seen, not those that can be… I have always labored under the illusion—but I also think it was true—that nobody ever photographed me. Because my face is not for sale. The real me is not photographable. — Benedetta Barzini, to Beniamino Barrese

Beniamino Barrese is the son of Benedetta Barzini—the first Italian model to appear on the cover of American Vogue—and his mother’s obsessive interlocutor throughout his documentary THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MY MOTHER, one of the year’s best.

Summoned by Diana Vreeland in the mid-1960s to come to New York for a few weeks, Barzini stayed for a few years, a sought-after subject of Richard Avedon, Bert Stern, and Andy Warhol, a confident of Gerard Malanga and Salvador Dalí, and an acquaintance of Marcel Duchamp.

Barzini was a double-rebel. Modeling in Manhattan put a necessary distance between Barzini and her parents—heiress Giannalisa Feltrinelli and writer Luigi Barzini, Jr., author of The Italians. But the trajectory of second-wave feminism in the 1970s opened Barzini’s eyes to the ornamental condition of women, and she returned to Italy and became an activist and left-wing academic.

I asked myself this question: Why do we have prototypes of beauty? Why are models at the bow of the ship and the other women are squashed together into the stern? Why? Because men invent women… Maybe it would be better if female bodies disappeared from men’s imaginations. — Benedetta Barzini

Barzani explains to her son that the camera is a dangerous liar because within its capture of arbitrary moments, it “freezes” life “within a limited boundary,” contaminating thought and inscribing conformity. “I don’t like frozen things… I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a hundred million photos of sunsets. Frankly, they’re all the same. But they weren’t the same when you saw them.”

Barzini is by turns loving and exasperated with her son and his never-ending investment in images and their documentation. Yet Barzini still models herself—recently appearing in Simone Rocha‘s Fall-Winter 2017 show in London. Nothing if not contradictory, Barzini wants to remove herself from a world she finds deplorable, railing against ambiguity yet unsure which entrance to the void she should walk through. She explains to Barrese that their work together on this film is an act of “separation.” The filmmaker sees it differently, and together they find a sense of an ending.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MY MOTHER

Now playing.

Laemmle Monica Film Center

1332 2nd Street, Santa Monica.

Quad Cinema

34 West 13th Street, New York City.

Beniamino Barrese, The Disappearance of My Mother (2019), from top: Benedetta Barzini (3); Barrese and Barzini (2); Richard Avedon spread of Barzini in American Vogue; Barzini on the cover of Vogue Italia, September 1967; Simone Rocha Fall-Winter 2017 show, London; Andy Warhol, Benedetta Barzini Screen Test, 1966; Barzini and Marcel Duchamp, filmed at the artist’s Cordier and Ekstrom Gallery opening by Warhol, 1966 (2); The Disappearance of My Mother U.S. poster; Barzini (5). Images courtesy and © the filmmaker, the photographers, Benedetta Barzini, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Condé Nast, and Kino Lorber.

MARIAN ANDERSON

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The National Portrait Gallery exhibition ONE LIFE—MARIAN ANDERSON “[explores] the life of the famed contralto, her achievements, and how she became a symbol of the civil rights movement.”*

The show is curated by Leslie Ureña.

“Recognized as one of the greatest American singers of the twentieth century, Anderson is best remembered for her legendary performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where she sang in 1939 after segregationist policies barred her from theaters across Washington, D.C. However, this exhibition broadens the focus, delving into underexplored moments of Anderson’s decades-long career as a celebrated singer and diplomat. It also highlights the ways she inspired visual artists, ranging from Harlem Renaissance painter Beauford Delaney to fashion photographer Irving Penn.”*

ONE LIFE—MARIAN ANDERSON*

Through May 17.

National Portrait Gallery

8th and F Streets NW, Washington, D.C.

From top: Robert S. Scurlock, Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial, 1939, gelatin silver print, Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution; Beauford Delaney, Marian Anderson, 1965, oil on canvas, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, J. Hardwood and Louise B. Cochrane Fund for American Art; Allen T. Winigrad, Marian Anderson rehearsing with Aaron Copland, 1976, chromogenic print, cibachrome; William Henry Johnson, Marian Anderson, circa 1945, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of the Harmon Foundation; Irving Penn, Marian Anderson, New York, 1948, gelatin silver print, © Irving Penn Foundation; Ruth Orkin, Marian Anderson and Leonard Bernstein, 1947, gelatin silver print, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Brian Lanker, Marian Anderson, 1989, gelatin silver print. Winigrad, Penn, and Lanker photographs from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Philadelphia. Images courtesy the National Portrait Gallery.

VINCE ALETTI’S ISSUES

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Who better than Vince Aletti to organize and aggregate a virtual tour of his massive and coveted collection of periodicals into the pages of a deluxe art book?

Something like this awaits the readers of ISSUES, a new publication from Phaidon.

The book includes work by Diane Arbus, Corinne Day, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Edward Steichen, Toni Frissell, Irving Penn, Horst, Collier Schorr, Inez Van Lamsweerde, Vinoodh Matadin, Bill Cunningham, and Cindy Sherman.

VINCE ALETTI—ISSUES: A HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN FASHION MAGAZINES (London: Phaidon, 2019).

From top: Horst P. Horst, Vogue, June 1, 1940, cover model Lisa Fonssagrives; Melvin Sokolsky, Harper’s Bazaar, March 1963, model Simone D’Aillencourt; Vince Aletti‘s apartment, photographed by Jason Schmidt, courtesy of the photographer and Phaidon; Corinne Day, The Face, July 1990, model Kate Moss.