Product Description

With his Big Nudes, in the 1980s Helmut Newton created a quite unprecedented long-term bestseller. Simultaneously, it provided a concentrated image of his aesthetic agenda. Powerful women were presented in all their naked truth????????????without fig leaves or fashion frills. This series of black-and-white photos, produced between 1979 and 1981, also marked a stylistic change in Newton's work. Elaborate layouts full of luxury and decadence gave way to an unambiguously formulated and monumental statement????????????"Here they come!" Dressed only in their indispensable high heels, Newton's amazons selfconfidently paraded on show. They rippled their muscles and marched individually as well as in formation toward the observer. Helmut Newton's classic work was published by us in 1990 for the first time.

Product Details

• Published on: 2004-06-30
• Original language: English, German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 88 pages

Language Notes
Text: German

About the Author
Karl Lagerfeld was born in Hamburg in 1938. He is a fashion designer and was a long-time friend of Helmut Newton's who often made portraits of him. Since 1983, he has been Artistic Director of the Chanel haute couturiers.

Helmut Newton
Helmut Newton was born in Berlin in 1920. He died in an automobile accident in Hollywood in January, 2004. He began his career at the age of 16, working for famous Berlin photographer, Yva. As an 18-year-old, he emigrated to Australia, returning to Europe in 1957 to settle in Paris. As of the 1980s he lived in both Monte Carlo and Los Angeles. The first of his countless solo exhibitions took place in Paris in 1975. Awards for his photographic oeuvre included the German Gro??e Bundesverdienstkreuz, the French Grand Prix national de la photographie and the World Image Award.

Customer Reviews

Bold nudes
This spectacular collection presents a series of photos from 1979-1981. All of them show similar views of the models: nude (except for high heels), strong, and as comfortable wearing only their own beauty as when they wear anything else. Each pose seems almost confrontational - except that the model appears quite aware that you, the viewer, are looking, but just aren't worth her attention. There's no scale in these images, but I can't imagine any of the models being less than 180cm tall. They cast that much presence, irrespective of actual size.

You might argue the claim that all the photos show nudes. There are many picture-pairs of the models fully clothed on the left-hand page and unclothed on the right, in the same pose. Even these clothed images are really about the figure, though. Seeing the woman herself makes me look back at the fashion photos, and pay that much more attention to the figure that the fashions enclose.

I especially like the fact that Newton glorifies figures as they are. Sylvia (the cover model) and Brescia, for example, show physical features that aren't very fashionable right now, and that some might "fix" with cosmetic surgery. Wrong. These are beautiful women, period. Any flaws lie in the standard to which they might be held, not in their stunning figures. I fault Newton only for excluding non-European features and skin tones from this collection. The esthetic choice is his, of course, but those omissions weaken the whole. Not a lot, though - this book is still a necessity for any collection of figure photography.

-- wiredweird

Review of "Helmut Newton: Big Nudes"
The book is in beautiful condition and got here in a timely manner. Very pleased with this transaction.

Wry Visual Humor, Good Variety of Nudes
The only reason I did not give this book the full five stars is because I feel there was more of a sameness to this selection of photographs than is true of most of Helmut Newton's work. This "sameness" is of uniformly high quality, exhibiting the inventiveness and playful sequences characteristic of his images. On one page, a group of stylishly attired women appear in stationary or moving poses; on the next page, the same women in the same pose appear nude. Newton has a taste for this sort of dress/undress contrast, as he does for incongruous assemblages: a woman lying in the midst of seaweed thrown about by incoming waves on the beach; another nude lying on an expensive fur coat, while sprawled on the lawn; cords tied in a pattern across the torso of a woman gesturing with her arm in a bodybuilder's pose. Occasionally, Newton produces a truly outstanding photograph, even relative to his own standards; such an example is that of a woman caught mid-breath as she inhales cigarette smoke. The sensuality of this is immediately present on viewing, catching the reader/viewer's eye irrespective of the less-than-appealing reality of smoking.

All of these photographs are in black and white, all of the women are Caucasian, and all appear in attire and settings that suggest wealth and ease. In this respect, Big Nudes is similar to another of his collections, White Women. The photography is always of the highest order, and the selection of nudes is not of the cookie-cutter "perfection" that so often fills the volumes of this genre.

This is a book worth viewing and having, especially if you are fond of Newton's work.