Helmut Newton Quotes

I used to hate doing color. I hated transparency film. The way I did color was by not wanting to know what kind of film was in my camera.

I am very attracted by bad taste-it is a lot more exciting than that supposed good taste which is nothing more than a standardized way of looking at things,

Technically, I have not changed very much. Ask my assistants. They'll tell you, I am the easiest photographer to work with. I don't have heavy equipment. I work out of one bag.

What I find interesting is working in a society with certain taboos and fashion photography is about that kind of society. To have taboos, then to get around them that is interesting.

It's that I don't like white paper backgrounds. A woman does not live in front of white paper. She lives on the street, in a motor car, in a hotel room.

I have mixed feelings about those sorts of things. When I see it done by interesting young people, I think it's very valid. But when established photographers, people in their forties, copy me and get a lot of money, well, I find that to be very stupid.

There are two dirty words in photography, one is art, the other is good taste

Well, it takes a certain amount of money. And I've got to see pictures of the person ahead of time. If I don't like the way the person looks I won't do it.

The whole series is black-and-white, so when I went to shoot one of the women I only had black-and-white film with me. She had reddish hair and was a very pretty girl, a nice girl.

The point of my photography has always been to challenge myself, to go a little further than my Germanic discipline and Teutonic nature would traditionally permit me to.

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.

It began when I was so ill that there was a good chance of dying. I promised myself that if I survived I would never again pander to a magazine's requests or follow the ideas of art directors. I would only make images which were personal, which arose out of my own life.

I have always avoided photographing in the studio. A woman does not spend her life sitting or standing in front of a seamless white paper background. Although it makes my life more complicated, I prefer to take my camera out into the street ... and places that are out of bounds for photographers have always had a special attraction for me.

I like photographing women who appear to know something of life. I recently did a session with a great beauty, a movie star in in her thirties. I photographed her twice within three weeks and the second time I said: "You're much more beautiful today than you were three weeks ago." And she replied: "But I'm also three weeks older.

People gave us everything for free. We were allowed only so much film per picture, but there was no limit to the creativity. I like to say that they let us loose like wild dogs in the streets of Paris.

I find myself, after all these years, with a built-in safety-brake that stops me from doing certain things. And one of the reasons why I want to try so called hard pornography - I don't even know whether it's hard enough - is to see whether I will be able to overcome this. Because if there is one thing I hate, it's good taste, to me it's a dirty word.

Genius and taste don't go together.

I did find a wonderful girl last year, but the photographs that we did were more about motorcars.

Look, I'm not an intellectual - I just take pictures.

My women are always victorious.

You should feel that, under the right conditions, all women would be available.

In the photographs themselves there's a definite contrast between the figures and the location - I like that kind of California backyard look; clapboard houses, staircases outdoors.

Photography is 10% inspiration and 90% moving furniture.

The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography.

I was lucky to have my wife as the art director, and it turned out to be quite something - a great success. I'm very proud of it.

I hate good taste. It's the worst thing that can happen to a creative person.