The Sins of Helmut Newton 2009

Sex for Helmut Newton was different from the Playboy magazine version. S&M tainted photos versus airbrushed farmgirls, however Hugh Hefner recognized the Berlin-born photograher's talent and hired Newton to shot soft-core pictorials for Playboy, including pictorials of Nastassia Kinski and Kristine DeBell. His true vision of sexuality will always be renowned for its departure point being far beyond most people's ken of fetishism.

Me too, but only because the lingerie looks so expensive.

His ashes are buried next to Marlene Dietrich at the Städtischen Friedhof III in Berlin.

Click on this URL to see more of his photos

http://www.ocaiw.com/galleria_fotografi/index.php?author=newton
Sehr Mittel Europa.

Berlin October 1982

Berlin
October
1982
A morning Pan-Am flight from Hamburg
A Geldstadt
Money City
To Tempelhof
West Berlin
Behind the Iron Curtain

Henri Flesh et moi
DJ und Tursteher
Nachtclub Leute
Working Bsirs for the Reeperbahn pimps.

Templehof Gray morning Taxi
Zum der VierZeitenJahren Hotel
Each carrying a small bag
Only have
Two grams of Persian brown
We're remaking Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F
A novel about teenage hookers
Without the writer
We left her in Hamburg
She's safer there__ I look out the window For a familiar face Amongst the unfamiliar faces 1978 Clover The blonde runaway fled New York And a Texas oil baron Fled New York for Berlin East Berlin The orher half of here West Berlin After her departure Two postcards Both from the other side of the Iron Curtain Her new master A KGB colonel "Looks like you only more scars." I have a few more than four years ago Nothing one here looks like Clover Viele Blonded Kein Clover later__

Check into the hotel
Concierge looks like Dirk Bogarde
From THE NIGHT PORTER
A Nazi hiding in plain view
Forty years after the Fall of Berlin
Maybe sixty
A young man in 1945
Not a stray hair out of place
No click of his heels
Still everything about him Nazi__

We unpack
Huff some Persian brown
I wish it were China White.
Change into bathing trunks.
Both of us
Greyhound slim
White as Johnny Thunders
We swim in the tiled pool
It dates back to before the war
The Great War.
1914-1918
Our grandfathers served in France.
Long long ago__

Two couples exit from the sauna.
Speedos for the men
Bikinis for the women
Older
The men
Former Nazis
Proud___

They never lost the war
Henri is French.
He sees them too.
For what they were and are
"Salauds."

They see us for us
Auslanders
I stare at them
Mutter
"Nazis."

The word crosses the pool
They hear it
They know who they were
And who they are
I get up
Get my towel
We leave
Turn
Spit on the floor
"Nie weider."
Never again

On Kurdammstrasse
Wealth
The West
Zoo Station in the afternoon
No whores
No action
Eat Eisbein
Pig foot
Drink Berlin Weisse Bier
At night
Go to Der Dschungel Disco
Dance with TVs
Share Persian brown.
At least this isn't Berlin 1945___

In the AM we go to the East
The Berlin Wall stretching north south out of sight
This side graffiti
The other side
A Death Zone
Ladnmines, dogs, and snipers
Through Checkpoint Charlie
To
East Berlin
Passports bitte
A squat female border guard
We are of interest
For thirty seconds
Willkommen zu
Democratic Deutschland Republik
The DDR
The Workers Paradise Alles ist in Ordernung___

A walk through the ruins
Bullet holes in the buildings
From April 1945
All scars of battle in West Berlin
A Trabant scuttles by
Like an out-of-control lawnmower
No people on the streets.
Very few in Karl Marx Platz
Parking anywhere.
On a back street
Nothing to buy in the shops
The sound of boots
A Soviet patrol
Goose-stepping
Like Nazis
Never again__
Later
A German cellar bar
Order Berliner Pilsner
For the twelve people at the tables
No one drinks them
They are all Stazi Henri says
Secret police
Like the Gestapo___
We leave East Berlin
Without even a postcard.

Back in the West
Capitalism on the K-Damm
We have Persian smack
We
Free
Both of wish Christine F was with us.
Henri more than me
They are something.
At now for now
In both West and East Berlin
Fur Immer and always__

Postcards From Clover Nolan 1979

In September on 1979 Clover Nolan, the sixteen year-old fille fatale from the dusty cotton fields of East Texas, announced her impending departure from New York and America. The blonde artist never explained her fascination with Mittel Europa and left never to be seen by her friends, although that winter I received two postcards from Clover, which I recently found in a stash of correspondences in Andrew Kozak's closet.

The first one was from Mikolow. I asked Tony, a waiter at Velseka Restaurant, if he knew the town. "Mikolow is in Lower Silesia, nice old place, but surrounded by filthy coal mines and when I say filthy I mean brudny." I got the idea and ordered an everything bagel with coffee and reread Clover's words. Her handwriting was a little childish as expected from someone who had run away to San Francisco at fourteen to escape from a local oil baron three times her age.

Hello Boy! Well what do you know? It's cold and snowing here. I mean who would have expected the Russian Front to be cold. Not me and I got a rude surprise. But it's nice too. Kind of magical, if that doesn't sound too hokey. "She's in Poland and all she can talk about is the weather. What else? I and my art are doing just fine. I'm going to travel alot when I get out. I now speak Polish. I miss my home, my friends, you included. Kisses Clover.

Reading the line 'I'm going to travel alot when I get out.' I envisioned Clover in a woman's prison. How had she got a visa to Poland. The State Police regarded all westerners as spies and I didn't tell any of her friends about my suspicions.

I was glad to find a second postcard from Berlin in my mailbox a month later. Her penmanship had improved over the young girl writing from Mikolow. The date on the postmark was 11/3/79. I hid both from Alice.

Peter_____Ah Berlin! I feel home at last. You know I've always considered myself a German, but the amazing thing that even now, with the culture and language difference I still consider myself one. This amuses them to no end, but they like it too_____I think the language is beautiful, so full and sensuous and chewy___Yum yum. Not hard, but strong___nice yes! I love it. By the way I had sex with you. Man looks exactly like you will be in fifteen years. Same face down to the pores and scars...very twilight zone___I can't tell you how exact was the likeness ...You were (will be) pretty good. Clover. And that was all she wrote. Mystery without any answers. I've been to Berlin. I've seen the Wall. 1982.

No sign of Clover, but she wasn't the first woman I lost in Europe.

Nor the last.

Helmut Newton Of Course

Sex for Helmut Newton was different from the Playboy's softcore offerings, however Hugh Hefner recognized the Berlin-born photographer's talent and hired Newton to shoot 'vanilla' pictorials of Natassia Kinski and Kristine DeBell.

Newton's fixated vision of sexuality will always be renowned for a departure point far beyond most people's ken of fetishism, because his models' lingerie was almost as expensive as the settings.

His ashes were buried next to Marlene Dietrich at the Städtischen Friedhof III in Berlin.

Click on this URL to see more of his photos

http://www.ocaiw.com/galleria_fotografi/index.php?author=newton

Sehr Mittel Europa and Stanley Kubrick failed to capture that spirit in EYES WIDE OPEN, mostly because neither Nicole Kidman nor Tom Cruise are sexy.

But what else can be expected from Hollywood's Barbie and Ken.

Cannibal Capture

The BBC News have announced the Berlin Police's capture of the Canadian cannibal/porno star/bisexual/model/transsexual Luka Magnotta. His crime of killing a Chinese student and posting body parts to various political figures had gripped the imagination of the media, who followed his flight from America's northern neighbor to the Europe with the enraptured interest any reporter who give to a bisexual tranny cannibal murderer. According to arresting polizei cadets Luka surrendered at an internet cafe, simply saying in English, "You got me". Speaking German was not among his many talents, so now Canadians can rest easy. The murderer is in jail. He will be extradited to Montreal to face various charges ranging from murder to unauthorized shipment of human parts. ps There is no death penalty in Canada.