Helmut Newton (German-Australian, 1920-2004)

Helmut Newton's controversial and innovative portraits, circulated across editorial and aesthetic contexts, have documented society’s changing attitudes towards women, sex, and female empowerment. In his “Big Nude” series, Newton shoots females stripped bare, yet he casts them as assertive and decidedly in control. While the set conveys a diversity of pose and form across all subjects, each woman meets the camera with a piercing gaze as if to announce the deep seated power that accompanies physical eroticism.