Big nude IV
1980
from the Big Nudes series 1980–93

• Helmut NEWTON

Helmut Newton has long been a polarising figure in photography. His work has variously been described as empowering and misogynistic, although he always maintained that he loved ‘strong women.’ It was such a claim, however, that led feminist writer and cultural critic Susan Sontag to declare: ‘The master adores his slaves. The executioner loves his victims.’

The unlikely inspiration for these images (police mugshots of the Baader-Meinhof gang) is at odds with the highly refined photographs that Newton created. Although they stare defiantly at the camera, Newton’s models appear not as radical criminals – when have they ever been photographed naked in high heels? – but as fetishised twentieth-century Amazons.