HELMUT NEWTON (German 1920-2004)

This image, Newton's most widely recognised and emblematic nude, was created as an element in a complex composition made for French Vogue. Newton was inspired by press pictures he had seen of the offices of German anti-terrorist police in which life-size blow-ups of suspects allowed the officers to familiarise themselves with their targets. Newton set out to recreate such a scene but with nude female subjects. The constituent images were presented individually in the exhibition Newton Photographies 1980-1981 at the Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris. Big Nude III -- the poster image for the show -- started out on her unstoppable trajectory as a powerful emblem of Newton's forceful vision and a towering icon in the history of photography.