Customer Reviews

A Gun for Hire (Photo Books S.)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Highly recommended for anyone who knows Helmut Newton only by reputation. This doesn't show his most graphic work, but it has a nice range of his early editorial photos, fashion campaigns, absolut ads. This book is a great example of showcasing Newton's talent as a photographer. Instead of focusing on his sometimes intense sexual images, this book focuses on the composition, layout and colors his photography had. Don't worry, you Newton-lovers, the sexuality is still here for all to enjoy.
Newton is one of those photographers whose intense images and reputation can overshadow the actual brilliance of what's important...the photographs. If you are mostly familiar with his black and white photography, the colors in this book will take your breath away.
Don't be shy, this book will make you appreciate what a true talent Newton was without shocking you.

While i like HN work and always pick out his style even if i dont know a particular photograph, this book was downright disappointing. Its like someone assembled pictures which weren't good enough to be included in any of the other (previous) books just to sell it to suckers who will buy anything by HN. However, i absolutely adored the 4 or 5 pics of Monica Belucci and bought the book solely on account of them.

While I am always happy to grab a book full of naughty Newtons, it would have been even more wonderful to see the complete series of images that the undisputed master of kinky chic had created for the various euro fashion giants....some campaigns being a one season adventure, while others scandalized for years. The amount of advertising that he shot for french designer Yves Saint Laurent alone ,could easily fill a book. It was the perfect marriage of designer and imagist, followed very closely by Newton's ads for Thierry Mugler's erotically charged fashion fantasies. Sometimes it's hard to tell who came first, Newton or Mugler! In any case, Newton's unique imagry clearly remains unchallenged, even at their most commercial and subtle. The perfectly over groomed mannequins posed ever so precisely to convey roles of power, dominance , discipline, torture, fetishism and erotic menace...are all here. The acres of flawless,palest skin, highest heels, blood red lips, cold, smokey eyes often expressing a complete indifference to anyone looking on. The spectacularly graphic and bold compositions combined with the clever use of the blackest shadows as design devices instantly helps to define a Newton photograph. Many of the images showcasing his legendary wit and black humor, not to mention social and sexual comment.There's an amusing series shot for a calender with wickedly suggestive teenage lolitas posed at the ready in a desolate , dusty desertscape showing newton's playful and light hearted side.....very tongue and chic...and clearly inspired by one of his favorite themes, American Pop Culture. One missed opportunity for an amazing campaign would have been Helmut Newton for Tom Ford's Gucci....I can't imagine a more perfect union: A Newton "driving' a Ford to ecstasy....both men forever fascinated with drama, controversial lust and impossibly decadent glamour. If there was indeed some tests, it would be terrific fun if they ever surface. Paging mr. Ford....

The Christianity and even more the Islam have abolished to idolize woman as a goddess. However this was the daily use in the Greek, Roman and Egyptian religion (sorry to remember, that the Aztecs tore the heart of young virgins out of the live body). Newton has reversed this development - he told us, to idolize women again. I visited the Helmut Newton exhibition A GUN FOR HIRE in the "Museum for Photography" in Berlin, near the Station ZOO, Jebens-Street 2. Sometimes I thought Newton is cynical, contemptuous against women, emphasizes the power struggle between the sexes too much. After the reading of his autobiography I thought: "What a humorous, witty person! " After having the pleasure to watch the film of his wife on his work, I thought, oh God, I get dizzy by this hand-held shaking camera. After the reading of the museum catalogue A GUN FOR HIRE I always get quiet again. Newton was skilful. He regarded himself as A GUN FOR HIRE self ironically, as an unfortunately rentable killer because of the kind money. But if he had carried out a banal "killer" order with the necessary simple, most childish aesthetics guidelines for any fashion magazine, showing the models in a predefined wardrobe sales beneficially - then he afterwards extended the dialog with a lady in most cases after completion of this obedient work for the capitalist system of the chewing fan heating - then he enlarged the dialog into the direction of more human, erotic, adult and no longer infantile situations, real and no more prudishly, running free experimenting for new emotion and aura. The growing picture collection from the vermiform appendix after that official work peeled out that image, that unique art form, which everyone connects now with the name Helmut Newton - a milestone in the history of photography. Before the visit of the exhibition A GUN FOR HIRE (in the long night of the museums in Berlin, January 2006) I went astray in that nightmare of holocaust stele field in Berlin. Newton had managed to escape from the insanity of the Third Reich. Newton's work could have never resulted under the thumb of any ideology. At first in the private, thereupon in a society, where is the liberty to make something new, it was possible for him, to make what could correctly be described as "making a woman to an idolized goddess" again. A GUN FOR HIRE is the reminding bequest which, shortly before his death, he bequeathed to that town which had dropped him 1938. I hope, that Berlin people (and many more) will awake and learn, what he wanted to show...