A new exhibition at the Helmut Newton Foundation explores the legendary photographer's final chapter through his Riviera images, offering visitors a perfect introduction to his distinctive world of glamour and melancholy. The show, titled "Newton, Riviera," examines how the Berlin of Newton's youth continued to influence his work until his death in 2004.
The exhibition features Newton's last fashion shoot from winter 2003, photographed in Monaco where he lived during his final years. The haunting images show death messengers styled by Alice Gentilucci, captured against the cold backdrop of the French Riviera. These photographs would become Newton's photographic goodbye, as he died shortly after completing this final series.
Dr. Matthias Harder, director of the Helmut Newton Foundation and curator of the Riviera exhibition, explains the underlying tension present throughout Newton's work during a press tour. "Everything is somehow connected in Helmut's work," Harder notes. "The whole thing corresponds to a kind of role-playing, as if every situation were taking place on a stage or film set. He made every location his stage."
The Weimar-era Berlin of Newton's youth permeated his entire photographic oeuvre, creating a consistent artistic vision regardless of location. Whether capturing nighttime Paris, stark Los Angeles, or the glamorous Côte d'Azur, Newton consistently staged his signature mixture of glamour and tristesse, ignorant wealth and decay, voyeurism and power gestures - elements he had first observed as a young man in his birth city.
This connection between his formative years in Berlin and his later international work reveals the deep psychological foundations of Newton's artistic vision. The exhibition demonstrates how Newton transformed every setting into a theatrical stage, where his models became actors in elaborate productions that reflected his complex understanding of power, sexuality, and human nature. The Riviera series serves as both a culmination of his artistic journey and a poignant farewell to a career that redefined fashion photography.
