NEW YORK, NY.- Some things age gracefully. Others refuse to behave. Fifty years on, Helmut Newton’s first publication, a book that elevated his name far beyond the pages of fashion magazines, returns in a landmark, international re-edition. First published under the titles White Women and Femmes secrtes in 1976, it brought together fashion, portraiture, and the erotic in a visual language that was cool, controlled, and unapologetically provocative.
Here are the women: glamorous, commanding, seductive, and in control. Here are the clothes, cars, hotels, pools, bedrooms, and immaculate interiors. Here are the cultural icons of the time, from Paloma Picasso, Veruschka and Elsa Peretti to Karl Lagerfeld, David Hockney, and Charlotte Rampling. And here’s Newton, orchestrating it all with his famously sharp eye and subversive sense of humor.
This 50th-anniversary edition preserves the source selection and sequence of photographs, alongside Newton’s own reflections and Philippe Garner’s original introduction. Garner, who first met Newton in 1975 and later became Vice-President of the Helmut Newton Foundation, has added an updated text reflecting on the photographer’s life and on how his lens captured his “erotic pictures and portraits mondains.”
Half a century on, Newton’s arresting compositions and appetite for the subversive continue to fascinate. This new, multilingual edition gives a fresh generation of readers, photographers, artists, and fashion lovers the chance to discover what made Femmes secrtes challenging then – and what it still reveals today.
The photographer
Helmut Newton (1920–2004) was one of the most influential photographers of all time. He first achieved international fame in the 1970s while working principally for the different international editions of Vogue, where he was celebrated for his controversial scenarios and the ability to make a thoroughly planned photograph seem fresh and dynamic. His many titles and awards include Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
The editors
Matthias Harder studied art history, classical archaeology, and philosophy in Kiel and Berlin. Head curator of the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin from 2004, and since 2019 the Foundation's director, he has written numerous articles for art magazines, books and exhibition catalogues.
Philippe Garner is an auction specialist in photographs and 20th century decorative art and design, a historian, writer, exhibition curator, and vice-president of the Helmut Newton Foundation.
Helmut Newton. Femmes secrtes
Hardcover, 9.1 x 12.0 in., 2.97 lb, 132 pages
ISBN 978-3-7544-0785-1
Edition: Multilingual (English, French, German)
