The Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin will launch the major retrospective exhibition, HELMUT NEWTON. LEGACY, on 31 October 2021. Originally scheduled to coincide with the photographer’s 100th birthday, it was postponed for a year due to the pandemic. Visitors can now look forward to seeing not only Helmut Newton’s many iconic images, but also a number of suprises. The entire exhibition space on the first floor of the museum will chronologically trace the life and visual legacy of the Berlin-born photographer. With around 300 works, half of which are being shown for the first time, the foundation’s curator Matthias Harder will present lesser-known aspects of Newton’s oeuvre, including many of his more unconventional fashion photographs which span the decades and reflect the changing spirit of the times. The presentation will be complemented by Polaroids and contact sheets that give insight into the creation process of some of the iconic motifs featured, as well as special publications, archival material, and quotations from the photographer. It was in the 1960s that Newton found his inimitable style in Paris, as seen in his photographs of the revolutionary fashion by André Courrèges. Working for well-known fashion magazines, he not only took classic studio shots but ventured into the streets, staging models as participants in a protest, protagonists in a paparazzi story, and more. His clients’ sometimes strict requirements and narrow expectations served as an incentive for him to challenge traditional modes of representation. In the 1970s, Newton began to enjoy unlimited creative possibilities while shooting on location – whether by helicopter on the beach in Hawaii or in a Parisian hourly hotel, where he included himself in a lingerie campaign through strategically placed mirrors. Repeatedly testing social and moral boundaries, sometimes he even redefined them. Until the end of his life he continued to both disturb and enchant people with his visions and visualizations of fashion and femininity. No other photographer has likely been published more often than Helmut Newton, and many of his iconic images have become part of our collective visual memory. Now, following intensive research in the foundation’s archives, forgotten and surprising photographs are coming to light...

Opening on 1 October 2021, Leica Galerie Munich will present the first major solo exhibition by German artist and Hollywood star Thomas Kretschmann. For around ten years now, the renowned actor has been using his Leica to capture moments on the set, fellow actors, and impressive behind-the-scene situations, taken in familiar contexts or during his travels. What interests him is less the staging of a photograph than collecting “frozen moments.” Viewers were already treated to first glimpses of Kretschmann’s work in autumn 2019 at BERLIN PHOTO WEEK. Now, two years later, he invites us to “dive in” together for a more in-depth look at his photographic œuvre. The central series, titled MUSE, was created over the last years at his home swimming pool in the hills of Los Angeles. Similar to Helmut Newton’s work, Kretschmann, a former professional swimmer, often shoots in locations having to do with water, swimming, or the sea. Thus, it’s only logical that the photographer photographed his longtime partner and muse Brittany Rice in a multipart aquatic series. Floating on the water as if in a trance, emerging from the water, or diving into it, clad in a delicate negligee, she enchants viewers like Friedrich de la Motte Fouquet’s Undine or a siren from ancient Greece...

In a pop-up exhibition on the weekend of 6–7 November 2021, Berlin-born photographer Vera Mercer will show a selection of her New Works – consisting of exquisite inkjet and platinum prints – at Villa Heike in Berlin. She will also present her new book of the same name, and published by DCV in Berlin. Vera Mercer wowed international audiences a little over ten years ago with her lush, neo-baroque still life color photography. The photographs are populated by drinking vessels and vases, fruits and mushrooms, cutlery, and animal cadavers – be they recently deceased or merely the outer shell. Candlesticks also make an appearance, fitted with fresh or worn-down candles, alongside Mercer’s ever recurring flower blossoms, which occasionally lose their petals along the way. While some of the dead animals featured in the still lifes seem only to be asleep, others look as if they have recently been exhumed – offering new, more radical vanitas studies bridging beauty and transience, the perennial dualism we sense throughout Vera Mercer's work. Although some of her New Works are now darker and more somber than they were a few years ago, the photographer remains true to her still-life-based photography, which she realizes in multifaceted arrangements at her homes in Omaha and Paris.