Book Description
This book gets its name from 60 unusually dark and cryptic photographs. When Newton opened his "Archives of the Night" in the 90’s, gloomy images emerged like flocks of bats. His famous "Domestic Nudes" appeared in pairs and tableaus together with sinister landscapes. Palace architecture was displayed next to morbid vanitas paintings as were bodies cut open from an anatomical museum of wax figures, placed on show alongside a portrait of a Dracula star putting on his make-up. With the Archives, Newton, who decided on the placement of these works himself, showed us his dark side. But at the same time, he was amusing himself with grey areas – also typical for Newton. The juxtaposition of seemingly disparate motifs created new and enigmatic relationships that oscillate between satire and poetry, brutality and gentleness, irony and pathos.

About the Author
Fashion photographer Helmut Newton was born in Berlin in 1920. He has lived in Singapore, Australia, London, and Paris and has photographed extensively for Australian and French Vogue, as well as for Elle, Marie Claire, Playboy, Stern, and the American and Italian editions of Vogue. He has published numerous books and his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. He currently lives in Monte Carlo and continues to shoot photography for a variety of advertising clients and publications, including Vogue and Vanity Fair.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Posed in cluttered kitchens, in storefront windows, in hotel rooms and hospital wards, Newton's models are at once active and passive, whimsical and wistful, domestic and feral. Although these images are neither aggressively seductive nor glamorous, Newton's presence is felt nevertheless in his pictures' self-confidence, their assertiveness, and their defiance of society's rules and their embrace of its taboos.

SYNOPSIS