數位影象/數位攝影劇本

惡之美
Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful

Obituaries and appreciations of the photographer Helmut Newton after his death on January 23, 2004, are riddled with the monikers Newton collected during an increasingly controversial career. In the New York Times, Newton was described as the “35mm Marquis de Sade”; in The Guardian, an “enfant terrible”; and in Vogue magazine, for which Newton shot for decades, the “King of Kink.” Yet none of those nicknames come quite close to capturing the sly luridness and bold subversion of Newton’s images, which transformed fashion photography while simultaneously raising questions about aesthetics and exploitation.

The documentary “Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful,” released in what would have been Newton’s centennial birthday year, only briefly dares to question the methodologies of the man who recoiled at the words “good taste.” Instead, “The Bad and the Beautiful” is less about Newton himself and more about how his work made the women he photographed feel.

「我喜歡粗俗，我對壞品味有濃厚的興趣，它比那種假象中的好品味令人激動得多，後者不過是人們看待事物的一種標準化方式而已。」Helmut Newton從不害怕輿論，在他鏡頭下的畫面或唯美、或挑釁，那一張張黑白相片，流瀉了光影間絕對的美感與女體遐想，全都是獨樹一格的樣貌。

這部電影由擅於拍攝紀錄片的德國名導蓋羅馮波姆操刀。他不只重新剪輯Helmut Newton生前的影像、拍攝時的側拍，獨家得到超過百張以上的圖片授權，讓觀者能夠一次欣賞他無人能出其右的創作。並邀請時尚圈的安娜溫圖Anna Wintour、影后伊莎貝拉羅塞里尼和夏綠蒂蘭普琳、葛麗絲瓊斯等人現身說法，分享他們記憶中的大師。現在，就讓我們來聊聊這部紀錄片和Helmut Newton吧。
1.他拍出了最經典的時尚攝影
這位生於二○年代的大師，攝影生涯最經典的作品就是1975年在法國版Vogue登上的那張名為「Rue Aubriot」的照片。模特兒全身穿著Yves Saint Laurent的「Le Smoking」吸菸裝，站在空無一人的街道裏。當時的女性鮮少穿上這樣具有男性氣質的長褲套裝，聖羅蘭以這樣的褲裝給予女性力量，Newton更以攝影加強了這個印象。這張憂鬱中帶著浪漫的照片，不僅給了女性力量的可能，也打破性別刻板印象。可謂史上最著名的時尚攝影之一。

Helmut Newton的鏡頭有著滿滿的女人，而且還幾乎都是裸女。穿著華服的女人極有自信地裸露自己的身體，有時候，他的作品中也具有強烈的S&M暗示，施虐與受虐。他可以說是自六零年代以來最具侵略性的攝影師，但從這部紀錄片裡面，你很難會畏懼他、害怕他，儘管他確實調皮搗蛋。他的作品帶有一種矛盾情緒，是奇妙的雙重視野，通常是關於一個壞壞的美女，無可避免地成為一種男性注視。模特兒在他的鏡頭裡通常是冰冷的女神，甚至帶點惡魔的氣息，將蛇蠍美人的魅力提升到不同階段。


3.物化或美化女性？
他對女性戀物癖式的描繪令人難以忘懷。他鏡頭下不同狀態的赤裸女體初看可能令人震驚或覺得被挑釁，女性看似被物化了，也因此引來蘇珊桑塔格等思想家的批判。影片裡收錄七零年代後期的法國脫口秀節目，蘇珊桑塔格堅持認為他的作品是「厭女症」，因為有時模特兒在他的鏡頭下甚至是沒有臉孔的(比如說被鱷魚吃掉)。


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不管你熱愛或厭惡他的作品，你依舊無法否認他對時尚攝影的長遠影響。

慾望與權力，是Helmut Newton最擅長傳遞的畫面，也由於他照片中那強烈的挑逗意味，讓他的創作被稱為「情色時尚」。但深具影響力的他不僅曾為無數時尚媒體操刀，更引領當時的前衛風潮，至今無人能及。用最經典的 Helmut Newton 風格，演繹最挑逗的視覺語境。

4.聽當事人訴說真實故事
紀錄片最有意思的，就是找來曾與他共事的模特兒與女星。伊莎貝拉羅塞里尼與大衛林奇拍攝那張照片時，伊莎貝拉說，女性有時候會觸動某種男性恐懼的深淵。她說，這張照片裡講的故事是：「我喜歡你，該死，我不喜歡你，因為你很危險！」行事風格獨特的格蕾絲瓊斯也講述了一個故事，她說，一開始Newton對她是沒有拍攝興趣的，因為她的胸部不夠大。


影后夏綠蒂蘭普琳於1973年與他合作了一系列在酒店房間拍攝的照片，對於這位女星而言，這次的拍攝是非常發人深思的。「挑釁者是世界所需要的，因為它激發思想，激發思想，並激發各種對話。」安娜溫圖也十分激賞他的作品，為他辯護，認為他帶來時尚與藝術的全新風貌。

5.看見過去，思考現在
你也在記錄片裡能看見他與妻子June Newton高尚的愛，她是他的模特兒、繆思、妻子、老闆和美學合作夥伴。她以高尚的態度使他誠實，即便他的攝影作品可以看出了他身為男性的幻想，但無關於他們之間的愛。

儘管這部紀錄片根據近20年前的影像，但依舊是一部非常2020年的電影。你可以從Newton對他鏡頭下女性(模特兒)身材近乎一模一樣的偏執，看得出來他的審美觀──一種對西方完美女性的追求：長腿、豐胸、細腰。而當下呢？我們的審美觀依舊如此嗎？這是所有人值得深思的問題。

Director Gero von Boehm shows us numerous contact sheets of images that demonstrate Newton’s style. The women in his photographs were nearly universally nude or seminude, tall, thin, full-breasted, similarly shaved. If dressed, they were often outfitted in fetish wear, like pleather corsets, lace lingerie, or thigh-high stockings or boots. Certain series depicted individual or groups of women clad in gorgeous, high-end fashion in one shot, and then in the exact same positions—but now fully naked—in another. If looking into the camera, the women’s expressions were always challenging and declarative, as if they were almost daring the viewer to gaze upon them and deal with whatever feelings (shame, lust, embarrassment, jealousy) were churned up as a result.

Former supermodel Claudia Schiffer and longtime Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour speak about their own complicated experiences while working with Newton, but they call his work defiant and subversive, not potentially damaging. The only voice included who dares to criticize Newton is American writer and activist Susan Sontag, who during a shared appearance on a French television show counters Newton’s “I love women” with “A lot of misogynous men say that. I am not impressed.”  

To see just one of Newton’s pictures is to understand how deeply his photography, which gained popularity in the 1950s and then exploded into the mainstream through partnerships with Vogue, Yves Saint Laurent, and Chanel in the 1960s through the 1990s, has reverberated through fashion, art, and film, from the bad (Terry Richardson is clearly a devotee) to the good (Tom Ford’s film “Nocturnal Animals” owes a debt to Newton’s preference for gorgeous, distant women).

Yves Saint Laurent first showed his now-infamous tuxedo as part of his Autumn/Winter ‘Pop Art’ collection in 1966. Le Smoking would not only mark a shift in fashion, but in power. In the words of Pierre Bergé, “It is a well-known fact that Chanel gave women their freedom; years later Saint Laurent brought them power.”

Yves Saint Laurent first showed the new tuxedo as part of his autumn/winter “Pop Art” collection in 1966, and yet, it was photographer Helmut Newton who elevated Le Smoking to an iconic status with his shot for French Vogue in 1975, taken in a dusky Parisian alleyway–Rue Aubriot–in pure elegant simplicity that remains the epitome of chic to this day.

Yet, for all the celebrity acclaim, it was indubitably photographer Helmut Newton who made Le Smoking iconic; his extraordinary capacity to instil his subjects with powerful sexuality, has reached new heights when married to the shady YSL tuxedo. Shot for French Vogue in 1975, the story featured an androgynous woman standing in a dimly lit Parisian alleyway, with hair slicked back, crisp white cravat, cigarette, entwined with a model wearing only black stilettos. With pure monochrome simplicity, Newton created a piece of imagery that to this day has never gone out of fashion.

“For a woman,
Le Smoking is an indispensable garment
with which
she finds herself
continually in fashion, because it is about style,
not fashion.
Fashions come and go,
but
style is forever.”
–Yves Saint Laurent

Rue Aubriot, Paris | International Center of Photography (icp.org)

你絕對要知道的時尚攝影大師！Helmut Newton記錄片《情攝大師》該看的五大理由 | Vogue Taiwan

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參考連結

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