Background Image

...

It Began When I Was So Ill That There Was A Good Chance Of Dying. I Promised Myself That If I Survived I Would Never Again Pander To A Magazine's Requests Or Follow The Ideas Of Art Directors. I Would Only Make Images Which Were Personal, Which Arose Out Of My Own Life.

-Helmut Newton

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

It Began When I

Helmut Newton

...

It Began When I Was So Ill That There Was A Good Chance Of Dying. I Promised Myself That If I Survived I Would Never Again Pander To A Magazine's Requests Or Follow The Ideas Of Art Directors. I Would Only Make Images Which Were Personal, Which Arose Out Of My Own Life.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Helmut Newton

The Desire To Discover, The Desire To Move, To Capture The Flavor, Three Concepts That Describe The Art Of Photography.

I Spend A Lot Of Time Preparing. I Think A Lot About What I Want To Do. I Have Prep Books, Little Notebooks In Which I Write Everything Down Before A Sitting. Otherwise I Would Forget My Ideas.

Genius And Taste Don't Go Together.

It Began When I Was So Ill That There Was A Good Chance Of Dying. I Promised Myself That If I Survived I Would Never Again Pander To A Magazine's Requests Or Follow The Ideas Of Art Directors. I Would Only Make Images Which Were Personal, Which Arose Out Of My Own Life.

I Have Always Avoided Photographing In The Studio. A Woman Does Not Spend Her Life Sitting Or Standing In Front Of A Seamless White Paper Background. Although It Makes My Life More Complicated, I Prefer To Take My Camera Out Into The Street... And Places That Are Out Of Bounds For Photographers Have Always Had A Special Attraction For Me.

There Must Be A Certain Look Of Availability In The Women I Photograph. I Think The Woman Who Gives The Appearance Of Being Available Is Sexually Much More Exciting Than A Woman Who's Completely Distant. This Sense Of Availability I Find Erotic.

Technically, I Have Not Changed Very Much. Ask My Assistants. They'll Tell You, I Am The Easiest Photographer To Work With. I Don't Have Heavy Equipment. I Work Out Of One Bag.

What I Find Interesting Is Working In A Society With Certain Taboos And Fashion Photography Is About That Kind Of Society. To Have Taboos, Then To Get Around Them That Is Interesting.

I Like Photographing Women Who Appear To Know Something Of Life. I Recently Did A Session With A Great Beauty, A Movie Star In In Her Thirties. I Photographed Her Twice Within Three Weeks And The Second Time I Said: "you're Much More Beautiful Today Than You Were Three Weeks Ago." And She Replied: "but I'm Also Three Weeks Older.

Photography Is 10% Inspiration And 90% Moving Furniture.

They Often Ask Me To Shoot For Them. But I Say No. I Think An Old Guy Like Me Ought Not Take Pages Away From Young Photographers Who Need The Exposure.

I Was Lucky To Have My Wife As The Art Director, And It Turned Out To Be Quite Something - A Great Success. I'm Very Proud Of It.

Some People's Photography Is An Art. Not Mine. Art Is A Dirty Word In Photography. All This Fine Art Crap Is Killing It Already.

I Hate Good Taste. It's The Worst Thing That Can Happen To A Creative Person.

I Find Myself, After All These Years, With A Built-in Safety-brake That Stops Me From Doing Certain Things. And One Of The Reasons Why I Want To Try So Called Hard Pornography - I Don't Even Know Whether It's Hard Enough - Is To See Whether I Will Be Able To Overcome This. Because If There Is One Thing I Hate, It's Good Taste, To Me It's A Dirty Word.

The Point Of My Photography Has Always Been To Challenge Myself, To Go A Little Further Than My Germanic Discipline And Teutonic Nature Would Traditionally Permit Me To.

In The Photographs Themselves There's A Definite Contrast Between The Figures And The Location - I Like That Kind Of California Backyard Look; Clapboard Houses, Staircases Outdoors.

Look, I'm Not An Intellectual - I Just Take Pictures.

The Photographs Don't Arouse Me. All I Can Think About Is The Hard Work It Took To Make Them.

My Women Are Always Victorious.

I Like Photographing The People I Love, The People I Admire, The Famous, And Especially The Infamous. My Last Infamous Subject Was The Extreme Right Wing French Politician Jean-marie Le Pen.

There Are Two Dirty Words In Photography, One Is Art, The Other Is Good Taste

My Job As A Portrait Photographer Is To Seduce, Amuse And Entertain.

Some People`s Photography Is An Art. Mine Is Not. If They Happen To Be Exhibited In A Gallery Or A Museum, That`s Fine. But That`s Not Why I Do Them. I`m A Gun For Hire.

You Should Feel That, Under The Right Conditions, All Women Would Be Available.

It's Quite True That What I Am Aiming At, Even When I Take Portraits, Is To Get A Scandalous Picture. I Would Love To Be A Paparazzo.

...what I Try To Do Is A Good Bad Picture. I Work It Out Very Carefully, And Then I Do Something That Looks As If It Went Wrong.

I Am Very Attracted By Bad Taste-it Is A Lot More Exciting Than That Supposed Good Taste Which Is Nothing More Than A Standardized Way Of Looking At Things.

In My Vocabulary There Are Two Bad Words: Art And Good Taste.

I Used To Hate Doing Color. I Hated Transparency Film. The Way I Did Color Was By Not Wanting To Know What Kind Of Film Was In My Camera.

It's That I Don't Like White Paper Backgrounds. A Woman Does Not Live In Front Of White Paper. She Lives On The Street, In A Motor Car, In A Hotel Room.

I Did Find A Wonderful Girl Last Year, But The Photographs That We Did Were More About Motorcars.

Trending Author

Joseph J. Ellis

Humphrey Bogart

Category