The Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin has unveiled a groundbreaking new exhibition titled "Dialogues. Collection FOTOGRAFIS x Helmut Newton," offering visitors a fresh perspective on the legendary photographer's work through an innovative visual experience. The exhibition presents more than 60 carefully curated diptychs that pair Newton's iconic photographs with works from Vienna's FOTOGRAFIS Collection at Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien.
This marks the third time in recent years that the Helmut Newton Foundation has showcased private photography collections alongside its regular solo and thematic group exhibitions. The foundation previously presented "Entre Art & Mode" in 2018, highlighting Carla Sozzani's private Milanese collection, and "Chronorama" in 2024, which was originally shown at Palazzo Grassi in Venice and featured photographs from the Condé Nast Archives, recently integrated into the Pinault Collection. Newton himself had collaborated extensively with Condé Nast publications including Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Traveler throughout his career.
Both previous exhibitions were specifically adapted for the foundation's Berlin exhibition spaces, with "Entre Art & Mode" organized alphabetically by nearly 100 photographers, while "Chronorama" followed the chronological order of image creation or publication in Condé Nast magazines. Each exhibition presented a wide range of iconic images from photography history, an ambition that continues with this new collaborative format.
The current exhibition draws inspiration from the Dialogues newsletter of Milan's Collezione Ettore Molinario, which regularly pairs contrasting images from its archives. Curators Bettina M. Busse from Kunstforum and Matthias Harder from the Helmut Newton Foundation selected and paired the images through an intuitive and associative process. Each diptych presents two portraits, still lifes, landscapes, architectural images, or surrealist reinterpretations of fashion and nude photography, displayed side by side across different time periods.
The connections between paired images are sometimes formal and sometimes thematic in nature. While certain combinations may appear humorous or even arbitrary at first glance, the interaction between the images consistently opens up a broad field of imagination for viewers. This experimental approach allows the exhibition to fully unfold through the visitor's on-site experience, creating a playful visual journey through the galleries.
The exhibition explores multiple facets of human experience and the evolution of social life over a century by juxtaposing Newton's photographs with "partner images" from legendary photographers including Diane Arbus, Alfred Stieglitz, Margaret Bourke-White, Elliott Erwitt, Florence Henri, Duane Michals, Paul Strand, Man Ray, August Sander, Judy Dater, and Otto Steinert, among other iconic figures from 19th and 20th-century photography. These associations—sometimes complementary, sometimes contrasting, but always unexpected—have never been presented together before.
The interaction between well-known masterpieces and lesser-known works reveals not only how Newton's photography fits within broader photographic traditions, but also how remarkably similar visual ideas have often emerged independently in international photography, sometimes decades apart. This unique dialogue format demonstrates the universal themes and artistic connections that transcend geographical and temporal boundaries in the medium of photography.
