Vogue Italiaのインスタグラム(vogueitalia) - 10月2日 20時05分

Helmut Newton, Esquire, Catherine Deneuve, Paris 1976.

The French actress plays a similar role in front of Newton’s camera as in Belle de Jour, the scandalous, award-winning, surrealist film by Luis Buñuel from 1967 with costumes by Yves Saint Laurent. Nine years later, Deneuve again slips into the role of the seductress, her open and defiant gaze directed straight at the camera. Almost as if she is looking into a mirror, she appears examining and self-controlling. With her thumb she appears to pull down her silk lingerie even lower, while a strap has already slipped from her shoulder. The scene captures a subtle and provocative sense of frivolity, without being in any way offensive or vulgar.
The combination of exhibitionism and voyeurism, of intimacy and distance, often leads Newton – as we see here – to the image of the femme fatale. The reduction and abstraction of reality through the photograph’s black and white print allows us to easily imagine it as a scene from a film noir classic. What is unusual is the relatively narrow framing of the protagonist cutting off her forehead at the upper edge of the picture. The effect is an intensification of her expressive and self-confident gaze out of the photograph, onto the viewer.
The image was taken in 1976 for Esquire magazine. At first glance, it is unclear whether it is a fashion shot or a portrait, which is not unusual for Newton’s images. With playful ease, he repeatedly transcended and overlapped genre boundaries. Later, Newton included this image in various publications and exhibitions, and it now counts among one of his iconic images, embodying the ambivalent and enigmatic aura of Catherine Deneuve in its purest form.

Vogue Italia’s takeover by Matthias Harder, director of the @HelmutNewtonFoundation.

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