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The city served as a stage for Helmut Newton, and inevitably for other photographers as well. It was such a dynamic time that Berlin provided abundant material, with each photographer offering their unique perspective on the unfolding scene.
“The exhibition presents us with a huge portrait of the city, but everything is highly individual. He has his own language; they have their own languages; it's always very subjective. This is interesting because we are digging into a new situation; not only because we see different topics, but because the language, the approach, the perspective, the storytelling are unique. The angles are different too - one moment the photographer is staying in the same spot, the next, they’re going up a ladder or looking down. The angles are very important,” commented Matthias Harder.
A certain dynamic was unfolding in Berlin, and Helmut Newton captured it through his photographs. “As Helmut himself said, ‘I am a voyeur on one hand, but I'm a professional voyeur.’ There is a difference. Everyone was intrigued by this city, and he was a witness to its constant change,” Matthias Harder added.
Newton’s photographs were characterized by careful staging and intentionality. Looking at the photos from Constanze magazine from 1959, we see a playful yet staged routine: tree models posing in front of a car, the Brandenburg Gate, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and The Hilton in a kitschy fashion. Helmut Newton always worked with the same model or models in a series, placing beauty across different cityscapes. This juxtaposition of refined, untouched beauty against a backdrop of a city in turmoil is a hallmark of his work.
Matthias Harder reveals that Helmut Newton had three passions at the time - photography, girls, and swimming. This is evident in his later landscape photography, where he is often seen at a lake surrounded by beautiful women.
However, as we dive deeper into the collection, other passions emerge as well. Certainly, women remain his primary subjects and muses, a leitmotif throughout his entire career that tastefully flirts with Berlin in front of the raw, unfiltered camera.
Another of Helmut Newton's great passions was hotels and hotel lobbies. He favored both luxurious establishments like The Hilton in the Constanze Magazin series, and old-fashioned pensions such as Pension Florian, a former Nazi brothel, depicted in his 1977 photograph of the same name featuring Jenny Capitain. Additionally, his celebrity hotel diptychs, like the one of David Bowie opening a drawer in a room at the Kempinski, showing a Holy Bible, illustrate the unique settings Newton chose for his storytelling. In fact, he was ahead of his time in the stories he told the world, bringing the Parisian fashion style to Berlin, a novelty for the ‘60s.
These hotel spaces hint at a larger theme in Newton’s work: Berlin’s nightlife.
“What we see in this exhibition is all topics and genres merged into one narrative. Similar to the Hollywood and LA photographs, we see the myth of Berlin. You probably know this famous quote by Klaus Wowereit, the former mayor of Berlin, who said that Berlin is ‘poor but sexy’. Probably, everybody out there in the world was thinking that Berlin is such an interesting city, cheap, with a brimming techno scene. All of these aspects attracted a diverse array of people. There were the bourgeois people going to the museums and the techno guys, as well as this massive Love Parade with millions of people dancing in the streets and celebrating themselves,” Matthias Harder described the scene.
Helmut Newton shed light on this aspect of Berlin. He traversed through the city's nightlife, navigating the various layers of society. From capturing the underground club scene of the '60s to late-night hotel photoshoots and fashion photographs against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall, Newton's lens captured the essence of Berlin's vibrant nightlife.
Alongside the glamor and vitality of Berlin’s nightlife, Helmut Newton’s photographs also conveyed a sense of melancholia in his photographs. The “Sex & Landscapes” photoshoot, spanning from 1974 to 2001, brings together nude photography with timeless landscapes from Newton’s youth. He constantly revisited his youth, and Berlin provided him with a sense of nostalgia the more and more the city was metamorphosing. Newton himself existed in a constant juxtaposition, mirroring the simultaneous coexistence and dialogue of various genres and approaches in his work. The "Sex & Landscapes" series served as the opening exhibition for the Helmut Newton Foundation in 2003.
Helmut Newton offered a unique perspective on the unfolding scene in Berlin, distinct from other photographers who experienced it firsthand. Continuously in and out of the city, Newton captured this juxtaposition, while others depicted the raw scene. These photographs can be seen in the second part of the “Berlin, Berlin” exhibition.
For example, Arwed Messmer and Annett Gröschner have curated 12 folios, featuring 1056 found photos of the entire wall taken by the East German troops from the mid-1960s, looking towards the West.
Hein Gorry documented the destruction of Berlin through his one-of-a-kind aerial photography, while photographers like Günter Zint captured the emergence of student protests in West Berlin.
Lastly, Thomas Florschuetz and Harf Zimmermann’s color photographs offer new perspectives of iconic Berlin landmarks such as the TV Tower on Alexanderplatz and the Friedrichswerder Church by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. These images provide a unique view akin to peering through a dirty window, capturing the perpetual mist that envelops the city.
The exhibition celebrates Newton’s visual legacy in the context of mythical Berlin. Here, fantasy and reality intertwine to paint a diverse picture of the city’s ever-changing landscape, enriched by various perspectives from a range of photographers. Berlin, oh, Berlin!
