When you think of high-end 1980s glamour, you probably think of legendary fashion photographer Helmut Newton, even if you don’t know it. Powerful Amazonian beauties, crisp monochrome, overt eroticism, surreal props – it’s an aesthetic that’s trickled down to a thousand editorials.
You probably don’t think of notoriously staid 1950s Melbourne. But it’s here that the German-born Jewish Newton arrived as a refugee in 1940, and it was here he spent years establishing himself as a fashion photographer of note before moving to Paris in the early 60s, dismissing his entire career in Australia as worthless, shutting the topic down, and generally being intriguingly secretive about his work in those Australian years. So why the big secret?
