When I look at Helmut Newton's sumptuous images it isn't photography that springs to mind, but the lush, complex, often Machiavellian oils of Caravaggio: there is always a great deal more going on than first meets the eye and, the longer you study such works, the more rewarding and, paradoxically, more perplexing they become.
Caravaggio chronicled the marginale life of those around him in Renaissance Italy, using prostitutes to model for the Virgin Mary and tavern drunks for the faces of those lashing Christ to the Cross. Newton's backdrop is the opulent villas of movie people in the Hollywood Hills and the grand hotels of Europe. But like Caravaggio when you peer into his canvases, with Newton's images you get the illicit feeling of being invited into a world that is illusive, ephemeral, as much an invention of the creator as a representation of the scenes he conveys.
Born in 1920, Helmut Newton died in 2004 aged 83 after leaving Chateau Marmont in Hollywood at the wheel of his Cadillac. He lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a wall, an iconic end to... MORE
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