“It’s without any artifice. It’s just a woman standing there; she wears high heeled shoes, nothing else. It’s almost like a passport photograph, but in the nude.”
—Helmut Newton
This complete set of five Big Nudes – Yuko, Camilla, Raquel, Una and Verina – was published in 1994 by Galerie Sho and first exhibited at the Tokyo gallery from 3 May to 30 June in the same year. The selected images are part of the fourth and final series of Big Nudes Newton produced in 1993. Featuring women of different ethnicities and body types, these Big Nudes are some of his most inclusive works, encompassing a global outlook on women. What they have in common with his previous Big Nude series is that these women are fully confident and in control; they are unapologetic for all that they present before the camera.
In comparing the five images with their Big Nude counterparts with roman numerals, we have come upon the following findings. While Verina is the same image as Big Nude XI, Camilla, Raquel and Una are variants of Big Nude XII, XV and XIV, respectively. In terms of Yuko, she appears to only exist as part of the Galerie Sho set. This is only the second time a complete set is offered at auction, the last time being in 2014.
