We might know June Newton as one of Australia’s greatest photographers. She was also the wife of Helmut Newton, but her photography—much of which was fashion-world related—had its own independent style. Her photos were thoughtful, candid and sharp.
Now, the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin is showing her works in Alice Springs, Retrospective, which runs until November 19. The exhibit opened June 3, which marks what would have been Newton’s 100th birthday. Her pseudonym was Alice Springs, named after Australia’s famous nature-laden region. “I’m June, and Alice takes the pictures,” she once said in an interview.
Roughly 200 photos are on view, from her famous photo of French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, to her intimate shots of Newton and working with models, whether it was Pat Cleveland or the campaigns she shot for French hair stylist, Jean Louis David in the 1970s.
Without a doubt, Newton is an overlooked photographer who was mainly overshadowed by her husband. Several women photographers were overlooked in the 1970s, but she was much more than the wife of Helmut Newton.
She attended many of her husband’s shoots, whether it was for Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, and took her own photos behind-the-scenes. She shot models, literary figures and fashion designers, and this exhibition is a testament to her talent—her work stands on its own. Her photos graced the cover of French Elle and she shot editorials for Elle, Vogue, and Marie Claire, having a career in her own right.
The foundation held exhibitions of her work in 2010 and 2016, but some of the photos on view here have never been seen before. She shot inside the Monaco home she shared with Newton, and that collection was recently brought to Berlin.
Newton fled to Australia after becoming a British citizen in 1945, and landed in Melbourne, where he met June Brown, an actress. They married, and moved many places before deciding to live in Paris, where they resided for 20 years starting in 1961.
She started shooting in the 1970s, taking portraits of luminaries like Richard Avedon, Brassaï, and Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as Nicole Kidman, Vivienne Westwood and Liam Neeson.
After 1981, the couple divided their time between Monaco and Los Angeles. It was outside the Chateau Marmont where Helmut Newton died in a car crash in 2004. The last shoot she did in L.A. in 2004, right before his death, was an advertising campaign for a deodorant company on view here for the first time—we see women in pink dresses standing before trucks and motorbikes. This was her last campaign, as she stopped shooting after Newton’s passing. She passed away in 2021.
As Newton said in an interview, she would have never become a photographer if she wasn’t married to a photographer. “Our approach to taking photographs was as different as we are,” she said. “He took his; I took mine. I would call it spontaneity—something that happens between me and the subject.”