The Photographer Who Brought Sexy Back

It's hard not to like Helmut Newton's photographs. Sex-stuffed and cinematic, they anticipated — and inspired — everything that has come to pass at the intersection of fashion and art-ambitious photography. There is something achingly familiar about Newton giving a sense that Newton's mastery is hiding in plain sight.

A new show of Newton's work opening tomorrow at Cook Fine Art and the forthcoming broadcast in April of his widow's documentary, "Helmut by June," on Cinemax combine to remind us just what a giant Newton was. Looking at his work today, in a visual culture that percolates with images of fetishism and pornography as if they were references to sports and gardening, one has to work a little bit to see just how shocking and exciting his vision was.

The centerpiece of the Cook show is a rare triptych, "Walking Women, Paris 1981," from the pivotal moment in Newton's career as a man of the world. A Mitteleuropean refugee, he emerged in Australia before achieving success as a Parisian fashion photographer whose signature look combined Hollywood drama with narrative ambiguity. He wound up a darling of New York editors and the quintessential Southern California image maker of the 1980s.

Born in 1920 in Germany, Newton had an almost comically decadent childhood of Weimar proportions. He was irascible, attracted early to the worlds of sex and transgression. At 16 he was apprenticed to a Berlin fashion photographer; at 18, he was fleeing Nazi Germany for Southeast Asia. Bouncing from Singapore to Melbourne, Newton wound up in the Australian army, eventually becoming a citizen of the Antipodes and marrying an Australian actress and model, June Newton.

Once Newton became famous, he and June settled in Monte Carlo and Los Angeles, which neatly represent the twin poles of his output. Newton's work from the 1970s is drenched in a brooding decadence of fading European glamour. Perhaps the most famous shot of this era is "Two Pairs of Legs in Black Stockings, Paris" from 1979 (which recently sold for nearly $40,000). It captures all the same themes as Somerset Maugham's famous description of Monte Carlo as a "sunny place for shady people." Never have shady folks been so sexy. At ease with their compulsions, nudity, and objectification, his subjects make being jaded seem like a state of grace. The success of these images led to work for him in California that reversed the equation. His California nudes and celebrities are more like sexual athletes: toned, trim and offhand about their own perfection.

Between these two worlds lies Newton's fashion work. The "Walking Women" triptych that gallerist Scott Cook is selling from the Newton estate (one of three prints — the two others are in a private collection and a German museum) has not been seen before here in America. Coming from the famous shoot for his seminal work, "Sie Kommen," the triptych depicts the four models in three stop-action strides.

"Walking Women" is all hard bodies in motion. Like Newton's famous "Big Nude" series (represented in the Cook show by "Big Nude XV, Raquel, Nice, 1993"), the emphasis is on the formal power of a perfectly executed nude, all lithe indifference while the triple image emphasizes subtle changes in their eyes and expressions.

What unites the disparate themes of nudity, decadence, and celebrity in Newton's work is the preternatural self-confidence of his subjects. His celebrities, too — captured in this show by a portrait of Mick Jagger — are blasé and carefree. There are no victims in Newton's demimonde.

Moreover, for all the eroticism in a Newton photograph the nude is typically a distraction. The real interest lies in the subtle details in the background of the image. Out on the edges, architecture and architectural details are a big theme (as are landscapes, cars, and other trappings of the luxury life).

The empowerment of eroticism is perhaps best seen in a photograph from his Playboy series called "Two Playmates, Hollywood 1986." The insouciant gaze of one blond model is directed at the viewer, while her hair is being braided by another, more buxom companion. We only see the second woman's hands, her breasts and, especially, her soft sculpted pubic hair. The image captures everything that works in Newton. His louche sexuality, the hint of bisexuality that was more outré in the 1980s than it is in our own "Girls Gone Wild" era, and a technical skill that underlines the eroticism. Newton is a guy's photographer if there ever was one. What's not to like about that?

"Helmut Newton: Photographs" opens tomorrow at Cook Fine Art, through Friday, April 27, 1063 Madison Ave., between 80th and 81st streets, 212-737-3550.