Newton is widely recognised as a pioneer who shook fashion photography to its core, transforming its customary poised sceneries into a highly risqué world, complete with provocatively seductive poses that reflected the sexual revolution of the era. A mainstay in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and even Playboy, his voyeuristic unique look captures the innate underlying beauty, humour, sensuality and even violence of the world of fashion, wealth and power.

The ‘King of Kink’, as he was famously nicknamed, Newton orchestrated arresting scenes that feature nudity as the recurring theme, capturing a stylized jet-set lifestyle, where high-society belles are paired with guns, handcuffs, stilettos, orthopaedic braces, stockings and bold lipstick. Vanity and desire assume fetishistic qualities with sadomasochistic undertones, creating provocative and utterly expressive settings that appear candid and secretive, as if one is peeping through a keyhole to an electrically erotic hyper reality that unfolds behind closed doors.

Helmut Newton captured the world just the way he saw it. He believed that the perfect fashion photograph is one that doesn’t look like a fashion photograph at all. It is rather a photograph that looks like a still from a film, a portrait, a souvenir shot, or even a paparazzi shot; in other words, anything but a conventional fashion photograph. He despised artificiality, whether it came in the form of the phony glossiness of studio lights, or in skinny and surgically-enhanced models. He found beauty in the harsh reality of the flaw and set to elevate it to sheer perfection, transforming the female form into a statuesque god-like creature. He was fascinated by strong, powerful women, whom he regularly portrayed as seemingly androgynous, without however depriving them of their captivating essence of femininity. Menacing yet refined, provocative yet aristocratic, his models appear as manipulative ringleaders, dominating temptresses and aristocratic Amazons in settings highly inspired by film noir and Expressionist cinema. Predominantly black and white, the overall ambience of his photographs is that of erotically-charged elegance, set against atmospheric backdrops of darkened rooms and hallways in lavish hotels and mansions or the patios and gardens of bourgeois villas.

Hypnotic and perversely poetic, his work transcends the realm of fashion photography, managing to stand the test of time. Newton created a style so radical and widely recognised that it has been acknowledged for decades now as the go-to point of reference for the epitome of the artistic nude, clearly influencing the style of Mario Testino and Steven Klein among others. Looking back, it is amusing to see how his portrayal of the female form was initially momentarily questioned by the editor of British Vogue, who told him that 'ladies, Helmut, do not lean against lamp posts'. And the rest is history – as he proved everyone at the time so wrong!