Books |
Helmut Newton
By
Published: Jan 26, 2014
Category:
Art and Photography
In 1987, when I was a Contributing Editor at New York magazine, Tina Brown took me to lunch and showed me a mock-up of a Vanity Fair cover: Faye Dunaway, photographed by Helmut Newton. An amazing picture: a head shot, with Dunaway wearing black sunglasses and a veil. “Would you like to come to Vanity Fair and have this be your first story?” Tina asked. Only a fool would have refused.
All these years later, I want to work with Helmut Newton again. Okay, so he’s been dead for a decade. But he once took a picture that would be terrific as the cover image of my novel. (Those of you who read a draft of the book will recall a conversation about this picture in the first chapter.) It’s taken at a dinner table. The meal’s finished. The woman — June Newton, Helmut’s wife — lights a cigarette. Her blouse is open, revealing her extremely attractive breasts. Sad news: the Newton foundation won’t allow anyone to use that image.
I asked my friend Diane Meier for advice. Diane is a marketing guru, author of “The New American Wedding, president of MEIER, a New York-based luxury marketing firm, married to bestselling author and BBC broadcaster, Frank Delaney. Her last piece for Head Butler was about “women’s” literature.
Helmut Newton seemed like a good idea for a Head Butler profile. Diane thought so too. And as she had a real experience of Newton, she’s your Guest Butler.
—————–
In a grainy black and white photograph, a young woman stands in Pére la Chaise Cemetery before the tomb of the actor, Francois Talma. Her head, tipped forward, casts her face in shadows of harsh noon light. Her outfit is vaguely Medieval, possibly an example of fetish-apparel, crafted in what appears to be a soft black leather bodice with deep décolletage.
If this were a story, its title might be: “What Turns on Helmut Newton.”
When Helmut Newton’s work first came to my attention, I became, to place it in a context he might appreciate, his captive. A model lay on a bed. Newton lay next to her, the camera obscuring his face as he shot into the mirror on the ceiling. I was a college student and everything about the image, the grainy degraded texture of the print itself, the disheveled bed, the ugly, grimy, foreign room that held, indeed, a mirror on a ceiling, all conspired to fill an unspoken and dark interest. The voyeuristic idea of entering a world of questionable characters, disreputable places and louche behavior — at the safe distance of a magazine page — was nothing short of irresistible. I combed fashion magazines for his next layouts, and when his books began to appear, I was first in line at Rizzoli. [To buy “The Best of Helmut Newton” from Amazon, click here.]
From the moment I became an art director, I wanted to work with Helmut Newton. At Revlon, I was told that images like Newton’s were out of the question. At Avon, I had even less of a chance. Opening my own marketing agency gave me more control over the creative direction of our work and the clients we might serve. I could now choose, with little interference, whose photographs we might feature. And I worked with some of the best. But in my heart of hearts I longed to work with Helmut Newton. Of course, every art director worth his salt wanted to work with Newton. I recognized that. And though I watched for the chance, year after year, none of our clients’ projects or positioning seemed to fit the bill.
When MEIER was recommended to the president of an emerging division of Liz Claiborne, I saw a glimmer of hope. This new hybrid brand needed to make a distinct break from the middlebrow middle-management look that had catapulted Claiborne into one of the best selling women’s fashion labels in the world. Their new division was specifically created to expand the base, not to serve an existing customer.
I knew in my heart that the parent company was looking for an ad campaign chock full of pretty girls at a picturesque train station, setting off for a Duchess County farm where we might see them picking photogenic apples. But when the designers sent a full sampling of pieces from the new line to our offices, we laid them out, tacked them up, tried them on — and what came to mind wasn’t apparel. We saw duffle bags, camera bags: an idea of travel in rough environments. Who’d wear these clothes? An anthropologist on pyramid-duty, a paleontologist digging up the oozing Amazon delta, or an ace reporter jeeping into war-torn Belfast, steam from IRA bombs still redolent in the air.
We knew better, of course. The target customer was hardly likely to be a war-reporter or an Amazon explorer. But if you were more likely to be sitting on a muddy hillside at a bluegrass festival than lunching in Paris at Maxim’s, you might very well identify with someone who would choose clothes that could go down the Euphrates in style.
We wrote the following notes: Outdoors. White hunters. Hemingway. Explorers. War. Danger. Reportage. Safari. Jungle. Danger. Labor. Africa. Hiking. Guns. Sex. Sahara. Off-road. “The Year of Living Dangerously.” Danger. Danger!
Danger: I ran toward the word. This might be my chance, I thought. I called Helmut Newton’s agent.
Helmut Newton’s rep made a number of things clear to me; Newton wasn’t taking a lot of commercial assignments. He wanted to produce his own particular idea of kinky, steamy, cool and polished sex on film. Over the past decade or so, he’d begun to create larger format books of his photographs. Collectors and museums were buying his prints. He was becoming what very few photographers ever pull off: a commercial photographer who can cross into the realm of legitimate art. He didn’t want to shoot a bland fashion brand peppered with controls that might curb his best instincts and dilute his reputation.
I had a passel of Clio awards that helped. And the Liz Claiborne name may have held the door open long enough to let Newton’s agent smell the money; but it hardly sealed the deal, because he knew as well as I did what the Liz label had come to stand for. And it certainly wasn’t sex. I had to keep talking.
Sex and violence, I kept saying to myself. Sex and violence. Even American Vogue now carried shots of snarling German shepherds, their teeth a saliva-rich scant-inch from a luxe Charles Jourdan shoe and its model’s delectable ankle. The whip as fashion accessory had become only a bit more surprising than a Bulgari bracelet. But if pushing the voyeuristic limits on sexual escapades was beginning to seem less than new, the idea of violence and danger was becoming more interesting. At least to me.
The new Clairborne division’s style fit the narrative of a journalist dropped into a “hot spot.” Contained but detached. Integrated into the scene but separated from the brutality of the event itself. In other words, and in a purely emotional context, very much like a classic Helmut Newton set-up. The model looks at the camera. She tells you nothing about why she’s in a room equipped with an iron lung, dressed only in riding boots and a diamond necklace.
There is an iconic Newton picture of a tall slender model dressed in a Saint Laurent pantsuit; her hair is slicked back, she may be wearing heels, but every other element of her dress and attitude is apparently masculine — the cufflinks, the tie, the stance. When we first look at her, we’re unsure if she is a woman; the point of the style is androgyny. And Helmut Newton means to show us drag. Nothing less. Made as obvious as a man in a dress. We can’t turn away from its message. Or from its seductive energy.
The narrative of this new Claiborne clothing line became my lifeboat. And the environment of danger, in all its rocky and perilous texture, seemed proof that the campaign could work. And, I figured, our ability to get into these difficult areas would get the brand plenty of press. We would exhibit the kind of daring that was parallel to the nature of the apparel. Exactly what positioning should be – a cohesive message, in form and content, that cannot be separated from the thing described — a news story in itself.
There were voices of reason inside our agency and out. My know-your-audience mother: “Do you really want to risk your life exploiting other people’s misfortunes for the sake of fashion?” She nearly spun me around. But I wanted to work with Helmut Newton.
I ran my thinking by Newton’s agent, a big florid and garrulous Italian, who, apparently, knew everyone worth knowing and dropped their names, like ash from his cigarette, all over my office carpet. He was utterly adorable and seemed completely untrustworthy. He seemed especially delighted with the idea of the press following our every move. And to my relief, a few days later he called to say that Helmut and June were traveling, but due home in California in a few days, and that Helmut was going to call me. Call me. Helmut Newton was going to call me.
I’d worked with some of the best photographers in the world, but feared I would be tongue-tied with Helmut Newton. I wasn’t. Helmut was easy to talk to. Flirty. Fun. And quick to get to the point. He asked: Do you really imagine us dropped into areas of real danger, because if we’re not within view of the bomb blast or the terrorist, or the fresh wreckage of a hurricane, it won’t work. We can’t phone it in from an airport. No, I agreed. We’d need to be ready to move on a dime. And I’d figured that we’d probably need the cover of press passes to make this possible and get past the police. Yes, he said. That could work. Newton knew how to get passes, he told me. Enough for the whole team? The make-up artist and the hairdresser and the stylist and the wardrobe guys, and the fellows with the light banks and all of his assistants? Like a Billy Wilder character, he made it sound as though he could get anything. Yes. Of course, he said. No problem.
Could I do a few layouts he might look at? You bet.
A camel, it’s said, is a horse created by committee. I knew that we had no chance to land Helmut Newton if he saw a camel anywhere near my hand. So I took two shots from one of his books and used them within my layout so that he could see the way his work would interact with my graphics. And I sent them out to Los Angeles before showing my clients.
My plan was to get Helmut to agree to the job. If he did, I would work with his agent on budgets. I hoped Corporate would be so excited about the possibility of creating worldwide publicity that between the name of Helmut Newton and the audacity of the concept they would be seduced into green-lighting our campaign.
Our layouts seemed to have piqued Newton’s interest even further, and we all began to develop budgets and planning. We spoke a few times a day, working it out in pieces. The girls would be of his choosing. The stylists, hair and make-up and general crew would all be his team. I agreed to everything he wanted because, of course, I wanted that iconic Newton image.
But after a bit more than a week of back and forth planning and daily budget conversations with Newton and his agent, everything went cold. I left phone messages at the studio, Newton’s home and the rep’s office, with no returned calls. The following Monday morning I heard from his agent. Helmut had had another “episode,” he explained. No one used the word “heart attack,” but it was implied. He was fine, I was told. He was on the mend. But he’d not be doing our campaign. He’d not be airlifted on to the lip of a volcano or into the time bomb of Beirut. His danger was internal and real, and too close for comfort.
His agent asked for my cooperation in keeping the secret. Just please tell the client there was a conflict with timing, and say no more, he asked. He didn’t want prospective customers to be afraid of booking Newton for a shoot in Cannes or Hollywood or Paris. I promised to do just that. And so I did, sharing the story with no one. Until now.
Helmut Newton and his agent parted company soon after. Newton went on taking photographs, living his exotic and creative life for another seventeen years. He died at eighty-two, pulling out of the parking lot of his hotel in Los Angeles; not bombed by insurgents, nor swept away by a stream of hot lava.
Almost working with Helmut Newton — it’s a bittersweet memory, a heightened moment in one’s life that stays with you. I can certainly laugh at my younger self, recognizing with some chagrin my callow idea of values and my vague, shallow sense of direction. But given the possibility of working with Helmut Newton, I am going to forgive the girl I once was for even the most wacky and desperate of ideas. And I’m not so sure I’d be that much wiser, or saner or more balanced – if the opportunity came up today.
