The Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin Opens A Double Exhibition: Newton, Riviera | Dialogues. Collection FOTOGRAFIS x Helmut Newton

This September, Berlin’s Helmut Newton Foundation invites visitors on a journey through two sides of photographic history: Helmut Newton’s enduring love affair with the French Riviera, and a daring curatorial experiment that places his work in dialogue with icons of world photography. Modern Culture of Tomorrow has gotten a preview of what visitors can expect…

Opening on September 4, 2025, the double exhibition Newton, Riviera | Dialogues. Collection FOTOGRAFIS x Helmut Newton celebrates Newton’s fascination with light, glamour, and society, while reframing his legacy in an international photographic context.

Newton, Riviera

For Newton, the Riviera was more than a backdrop; it was a stage. After relocating from Paris to Monte-Carlo in the early 1980s, he traded the elegance of Parisian boulevards for the raw contrasts of the Mediterranean coast. Fashion models posed against concrete walls, apartment garages became studios, and construction sites doubled as catwalks.

Yet the Riviera was also a personal refuge. Newton and his wife June had purchased a house near Saint-Tropez as early as 1964, where summers were spent experimenting with new ideas. From glamorous shoots for Vogue and Marie Claire to intimate late-night images overlooking the quiet Monaco sea, Newton transformed the coast into a lens for his evolving vision.

The exhibition brings together over 100 works – including rare vintage prints – spanning fashion, portrait, and nude photography. They reveal not only Newton’s eye for spectacle around fashion photography but also the intimacy and melancholy that occasionally surfaced beneath the gloss.

Dialogues. Collection FOTOGRAFIS x Helmut Newton

Alongside Newton, Riviera, the Foundation presents an experimental new concept: Newton’s photographs staged in direct dialogue with works from the prestigious Collection FOTOGRAFIS (Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien). More than 60 diptychs bring Newton face-to-face with icons such as Diane Arbus, Alfred Stieglitz, Margaret Bourke-White, Weegee, and Man Ray.

The juxtapositions range from striking formal parallels to playful, even unsettling contrasts. A Newton portrait of Hanna Schygulla beside an Arbus image of elderly dancers, or his Blumarine fashion photograph paired with Weegee’s candid New York society shot, sparks fresh readings of both artists.

Curated by Matthias Harder and Bettina M. Busse, the show underscores how Newton’s imagery resonates across time. Themes of gender, power, spectacle, and vulnerability emerge with renewed urgency when set against the broader history of photography.

A Season Highlight in Berlin

Together, these two exhibitions cast Newton not only as a master of fashion photography but as an enduring voice in the global conversation on images and society. His Riviera work, with its luminous blend of glamour and grit, finds new relevance when framed against the experimental dialogues with his photographic peers.

With over 160 works on display, Newton, Riviera | Dialogues positions the Helmut Newton Foundation once again at the forefront of rethinking photographic history. Running from September 5, 2025 to February 15, 2026, the exhibition is poised to be one of Berlin’s cultural highlights of the season.

Lead Image: Helmut Newton, Close-up, Italian Vogue, Bordighera 1982, © Helmut Newton Foundation

Image credits: Helmut Newton Foundation