“The beauty of photography is that there’s a mystery about it. You’re just dealing with that one moment.” - Helmut Newton
Over his decades-long career, Helmut Newton created a style marked by an unabashed and gloriously decadent sexuality. Newton distinguished himself by circumventing more conventional approaches to fashion photography of the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, he created imagery that was revolutionary for its era, defying the expectations of designers and fashion enthusiasts alike. Indeed, fashion impresario Karl Lagerfeld has noted that Newton’s images, ‘have survived better than the fashion they were meant to represent or illustrate.’
Woman Examining Man, Calvin Klein, American Vogue, Saint Tropez, 1975, presents the female model seated, relaxed, confident, and her legs splayed as she inspects the semi-clad man standing nearby. Newton frames the model as the domineering character within the scene, thereby subverting the art-historical precedent of depicting a woman subject as passive. The male model’s submissive physicality, and more so, the absence of his face from the image, relegates him to the traditionally feminine role of sex object. The woman depicted is in control of her eroticism; her seduction of the man is calculating, deliberate and assertive. Newton presents her as the emblem of a new era, one that called for the liberation of women, imbuing them with a formerly negated sense of empowerment that is undeniably and seductively compelling.