Helmut Newton: Sex & Landscapes, 2002

Curated on behalf of The Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest

Helmut Newton, Sex and Landscapes, 2002 © The Artist

Helmut Newton: Sex & Landscapes

Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest
30 May – 29 September 2002

Host Curator of travelling exhibition

Concept by Philip de Pury
Organised with June Newton
Produced with Taschen Verlag

“Helmut’s world of dark, brooding seas, baroque statuary, crashing waves, a long desert highway under threatening skies, a Berlin park at dusk, enigmatic apartment buildings at night, the Rhine seen from the air, the shadows of airplanes, all this interwoven with hard and voyeuristic sexual imagery, plus a touch of his high style and glamour.” – described by Philippe de Pury

Helmut Newton, Sex and Landscapes (Woman into Man, 1979), 2002 © The Artist

Helmut Newton, Sex and Landscapes, 2002 © The Artist

Sex and Landscapes showcased a selection of Helmut Newton’s little-known landscape and travel photographs, presented alongside yet unpublished and more explicit sexual pictures. It included large-scale photographs taken between 1974 and 2001 in black and white and colour. Landscapes were juxtaposed with nude photographs from timeless atmospheres tinged with melancholy, elegance and the vanity of supermodels confronted with their reflection. The unorthodox juxtaposition of nudes and landscapes corresponded to the disparate coexistence and interaction of various genres and approaches in Newton’s work. It reflected the end of fashion photography’s golden age and contemporary museology’s lack of consciousness in celebrating voyeuristic representations of the female nude.

Jade Niklai worked closely with June Newton, the artist’s wife and the travelling show’s producer. It was the last exhibition opening attended by Helmut Newton.