Female body as a fetish in Helmut Newton's photography

Abstract

The paper illuminates some of the principles by which Helmut Newton's photographic poetics functions. It is examined from the perspectives of recent art history, feminist critique and psychoanalytic theory. His photographs came to a standstill not far from pornography, yet they stayed within the jet-set community, reflecting at the same time the sexual revolution in the 60s and 70s of the twentieth century and the rising of the fashion and film industries and other Western emancipatory movements. Newton's obscure photojournalism provoked conventions, presenting the female body as a fetish and object of erotic pleasure, affirming, nonetheless, a new feminine self-consciousness and freedom. Thus, he constituted modern eroticism by connecting fetishism, voyeurism and sadomasochism, creating a provocative hybrid photography that embraced fashion, eroticism and portrait, hence documenting, in highly stylistic manner, the decadency and eccentricity of the lifestyle of the rich.