HANS PETTER BLAD ON MRS. NEWTON

Image found at BookBot. From the 2004 book Mrs Newton by June Newton.

The image of Helmut Newton as a convalescent with an umbrella propped beside his bed remains unforgettable in the dark recesses of my hypochondriacal mind. This photograph is taken from the wonderful book Mrs Newton, which pays tribute to June Newton’s work as a photographer and is also a classic Bildungsroman written in the darkroom. The novel's central theme is her all-consuming love for Helmut Newton and, by extension, for all that is illuminated.

Unlike almost all other literary lovers, who are condemned to wander astray in purgatory, the Newtons find their way to a happiness beyond words. Leafing through the book, one might be tempted to quote Jorge Luis Borges: 'After all these years, I have noticed that beauty, like happiness, appears often. Not a day passes without our finding ourselves, for a moment, in paradise”.

Among the book’s many eloquent images, I have chosen a photograph of Helmut Newton shortly after a heart attack — or juste un souffle au cœur, as he himself dismissively called it — reclining with elegant nonchalance in his hospital bed. Even in the intensive care unit of Lenox Hill Hospital, the celestial is present in the eyes of the man looking through the viewfinder.

Afterimage is an ekphrastic series exploring that one image you see when you close your eyes—the one that lingers in your mind. We invite different people to reflect on an image they can't shake. This column originated in the inaugural issue of the Objektiv journal and continues today here on our web journal. This Afterimage was first published in Objektiv #4.