Helmut Newton
[Photographer, b. 1920, Berlin, d. 2004, Los Angeles.]
Genius and taste don’t go together.
The photographs don’t arouse me. All I can think about is the hard work it took to make them.
Any photographer who says he’s not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar.
Some people’s photography is an art. Not mine. Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine art crap is killing it already.
Look, I’m not an intellectual—I just take pictures.
My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.
My advice for the young? There are two dirty words in photography; one is “art,” and the other is “good taste.”
The people in my pictures have been “arranged,” as on a stage. Nonetheless my pictures are not counterfeit; they reflect what I see in life with my own eyes.
