To be able to handle people on a photoshoot without turning into an alcoholic or serial killer.” It was sort of a father figure-ish thing because after ten years of being so close with somebody and so on top of each other, you exchange a lot of personal information and that helps you understand the person even more: the way he thinks and views things. I ended up learning by doing and copying his being. I have not seen this modus operandi with any other photographers so far. It was extremely enlightening the way he did it. That got more and more intense through spending time together and then handling clients, models, editors or whoever there was on a shoot. On my side – doing the hair, the make-up and later the styling – it was creating that woman he had in mind and matching her into the story line. It was more about the humanity of it: how you deal with people on a photo shoot. “I’ve learned everything about the industry that I know now through him. We clicked there and then and didn’t let go of each other until the day he died. “We just started talking and we found out we had a lot of things in common: him being an immigrant and refugee leaving Germany and me being an immigrant and refugee having left the East Block (Yugoslavia). He was an absolute gentleman and absolutely charming. He was nothing I expected him to be in a way. It was for this car and I only found out it was going to be with Helmut Newton when I got there. I was booked for a photoshoot by my agent in Strasbourg, France, early 90s. “I used to be a hairdresser and a make-up artist. Sascha Lilic is a London and Paris-based stylist who worked exclusively with Helmut Newton for over ten years. And that’s the secret behind his willingness and eagerness to go back to Berlin starting in the 60s, and then in the 70s, and then in the 80s and 90s he was often in Berlin.” And then I think what I discovered and liked about him was his positive thinking: He never said that something is impossible. The photographs tell that but you have to know what the background is. This perspective of women was actually a revelation. He explained that once to me because he said that’s the most interesting: their strength and openness and they’re much stronger than men. “What I didn’t know before I met him, looking at his photographs, was that he had so much respect for women. It was his brand to do those provocative photographs. Our time is so fast and he died over ten years ago and would have turned 100 this year and that’s a good reason to look back. But I wanted to do something for his memory and he shouldn’t be forgotten, because now he’s on the verge of being forgotten a little bit. A monument is not a good word for Helmut. “I still think about him everyday: his sense of humour, his elegance, his positiveness. Gero von Boehm is the director of the 2020 documentary, The Bad and the Beautiful, and was a close friend and collaborator of Helmut Newton. Photos spanning his career will be presented along an 85 meter-long wall in Kreuzberg in addition to City Light posters around the city and a viewing of the recently released documentary on Newton, The Bad and the Beautiful.īut who was this controversial figure behind the lens? And how did he conduct himself on photo shoots? Oft-mentioned were his unforgettable humour and undeniable reverence of bold women, connecting these five, distinct personal histories of candid, poignant observations – with a little bit of a wink. He returned periodically to Berlin after the war to shoot fashion editorials and fondly revisited his old neighborhood as witnessed in the 2002 German documentary of his life, Mein Leben.Īt the end of October, the Helmut Newton Foundation will fete the provocative fashion photographer throughout Berlin on what would have been his 100th birthday with Helmut Newton One Hundred. It was the place he had learned to be a photographer and where stark Nazi iconography played a major role in shaping his vision – even though he grew up in a Jewish family. Despite his dramatic departure on the eve of World War II from his birth city of Berlin, Helmut Newton had never forgotten its formative influence on his life and work.
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