OT- Obit-Famed German Photographer Killed in L.A. Car Crash

Fri January 23, 2004 08:51 PM ET
 
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - German-born photographer Helmut Newton, whose
stark, often sadomasochistic portraits of nude women in chains and bonds
won him acclaim and revulsion, was killed in a car accident in Hollywood
on Friday, police said.
 
Newton, 83, was pulling out of a parking lot at the Chateau Marmont
Hotel just off Sunset Boulevard at about noon when he lost control of
the Cadillac he was driving and crashed into a wall, Los Angeles Police
Department officer April Harding said.
 
The car sustained major damage, and Newton died of his injuries a short
time later at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, she said, adding the accident
remained under investigation. No one else was reported hurt in the
wreck.
 
The accident brought to an abrupt end a celebrated photography career
spanning eight decades.
 
Born in Berlin in 1920 to Jewish parents, Newton was apprenticed to a
society photographer in 1936 and fled Germany two years later for
Singapore, then settled in Australia, where he served in the army and
worked as a fashion photographer before returning to Europe in 1957.
After making his home in Paris for many years, he moved to Monte Carlo
in 1980.
 
Admittedly color blind, he once joked that his difficulty distinguishing
yellow from green and green from blue was "why I take very good color
pictures."
 
But it was the often shocking, coldly stylistic nature of his images,
printed in Vogue and other fashion magazines, for which Newton was
renowned.
 
His specialty was sharply focused female nudes, often Amazonian women
with hints of sexual deviancy, danger and fetishism. He photographed
women wearing dog collars, chains and even saddles.
 
In one notorious shot that outraged Italian jeweler Bulgari, he
photographed their diamonds and sapphires on the wrists of a model
engaged in dismembering a chicken.
 
Men in his photos typically appeared in servile roles, as waiters,
chauffeurs or mere onlookers.
 
His work outraged many and feminists protested one of his exhibits by
throwing paint on his photos.
 
 
 
Received on Fri Jan 23 21:02:47 2004