Anna Wintour has said that Helmut Newton’s photographs are “synonymous with Vogue at its most glamorous and mythic.” Newton shot campaigns for everyone from Yves Saint Laurent to Blumarine to Swarovski between the 1970s and 1980s. Despite their commercial purpose, many of these images felt closer to editorial shoots than advertisements. Newton, who jokingly called himself “a gun for hire,” was also often provocative, using photography to make statements about sex and power. From the 1990s onward, Steven Klein has carried that baton, likewise exploring charged themes of gender, beauty, and sexuality. “I think what happens is that you do the project first, then you think about what it’s about,” he once said. “Years later, you figure out why you’ve done things.” This exhibition places the two masters side by side.
