Saul Leiter. David Lynch. Helmut Newton: Nudes

Saul Leiter, parallel to his fashion photography for Harper’s Bazaar and the colorful abstractions he captured on the streets of New York from the 1950s onwards, also photographed nudes in the studio. These pictures remained under lock and key during his lifetime and only a few of his friends knew his quiet, intimate black-and-white images.
 In 2018, a book on Leiter’s nudes, In My Room, was published by Steidl Books, and Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York exhibited a selection of new prints.

The Helmut Newton Foundation will now present for the first time around 100 unique vintage and late prints, printed by Saul Leiter himself. In his small-format nude portraits, women recline on sofas, become silhouettes against the light, are pictured smoking and lost in thought, or smile and pose for Leiter’s camera; not all models are entirely undressed. The images are subtle, sensitive, almost shy approaches to the female body and spirit.

We encounter a similar visual atmosphere in the nudes of David Lynch, taken half a century later mostly in Lodz and Los Angeles. Many of them are in black and white; a few are in color. In his abstract images, details often fill the frame; only upon closer examination can we associate them with the human body and compare them to our own in our mind’s eye. A sense of intimacy (or the illusion thereof) is achieved through extreme close-ups with an almost tactile physicality, even if only a naked thigh or arm is visible in the frame.

Helmut Newton began photographing nudes in the 1970s, both independently and incorporated into his fashion photography, and worked in this genre until the end of his life in 2004. 

It marks the first time in the history of the Helmut Newton Foundation that an exhibition will be dedicated exclusively to the genre of nude photography.

Entry price 10,00 €
Reduced price 5,00 €

IMAGE: Helmut Newton
Bergstrom over Paris, Paris, 1976
© Helmut Newton Estate