Helmut Newton: Archives De Nuit

This astonishing collection of previously unpublished photographs, culled from his archive of more than 10,000 contact prints, represents the distinctive, universal quality of Helmut Newton's work. While he is largely known for his forthright photos of famous men and women, these images of unknown subjects in largely conventional settings manage to be even more arresting than Newton's more popular work.

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, their defiance of society's rules and their embrace of its taboos.

Brilliantly juxtaposed to emphasize their narrative power, the photographs here not only tell individual stories of brutality, gentleness, irony and sentimentality -- they combine to create a masterpiece of erotic and visual literature writ large by one of the most powerful and important photographers of our time.