From 24 April 2026, following over 20 years of successful exhibition programming in the permanent exhibition “Helmut Newton’s Private Property” on the ground floor of the Museum of Photography, the exhibition concept will be expanded and the existing presentation radically transformed. The basic idea of providing information in this space about the lives of Helmut Newton and his wife June remains unchanged. The temporary exhibitions on the first floor will also continue to contextualise the work of Helmut Newton and Alice Springs anew twice a year – sometimes as solo exhibitions, sometimes as group exhibitions.
Image above: Collage of various pictures by Helmut Newton, featured in the film Intermezzo. Revisiting Helmut Newton. © Helmut Newton Foundation | Produced by Profirst International in collaboration with Martin Salvador Studio for the MOP Foundation
This interim stage in the transformation of the existing permanent exhibition features a cinematic ‘intermezzo’ starring Helmut Newton in a stunning film space. On the ground floor, eight video projectors screen a film onto four screens. The film is based in part on the film portrait created three years ago for a major Newton exhibition in A Coruña, produced by Profirst International in collaboration with the Martin Salvador Studio for the MOP Foundation there. It is supplemented by previously unseen footage. Various sources were drawn upon for this, including material from June Newton, which was recently processed and digitised in the museum’s own archive.
For the first time, visitors in Berlin can now watch interviews with a dozen eyewitnesses, including Philippe Garner, Carla Sozzani, Jenny Capitain, Violetta Sanchez and Matthias Harder, and experience Newton’s work in a completely new light. The film has been edited into an endless loop, offering interested visitors a surprising and thematically rich experience.
At the rear of the exhibition space on the ground floor of the museum, nearly 100 of Newton’s exhibition posters remain on display, albeit in a different setting and supplemented by several posters from various solo exhibitions by Alice Springs. In the 16-metre-long display case beneath the posters, the vintage magazines featuring Newton’s published work have been replaced for the new temporary exhibition ‘Intermezzo’ by other fashion and lifestyle magazines and combined with magazine editorials by Alice Springs, including publications such as Jardin des Modes, Elle, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Egoïste, Stern, The New Yorker, Photo and Paris Match.
So at this point, the exhibition display remains the same; only the content changes. A leisurely stroll past the wall display continues to offer an in-depth insight into the development of fashion photography and the changing image of women in the Western world from the late 1950s to the beginning of the 21st century, including the revolutionary social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s and their visual impact – right down to fashion, which, as is well known, reflects the spirit of the times.
Alongside this, in the corridors of “Intermezzo”, large display panels featuring illustrated biographies of the life and work of Helmut and June Newton, as well as framed portrait photographs of the two founders of the foundation, are on display. Opposite the huge poster wall, a new curatorial concept also begins, which will later be repeated at irregular intervals under the title “Spotlight: Behind the Frame”: An iconic photograph from the work of Helmut Newton or Alice Springs is brought into focus by examining the history of its creation and distribution through contact sheets from the shoot, publications of the specific image, notes where applicable, preparatory Polaroids and comparable photographs.
The exhibition opens with “Rue Aubriot”, Newton’s legendary fashion photograph from Paris, taken on the eponymous street for French Vogue in 1975, alongside the first photograph in Alice Springs’ body of work: the male model smoking, an advertising image for Gitanes cigarettes, also taken in Paris in 1970. This exhibition concept in miniature format is to be continued later by guest curators, thereby enabling an external, fresh perspective on the work of Helmut Newton and Alice Springs. In this way, the Foundation and its archives are, in the truest sense of the word, opened up to a new encounter.
WHEN?
From Friday, 24. April 2026
WHERE?
Helmut Newton Foundation
Museum für Fotografie
Jebensstraße 2
10623 Berlin-Charlottenburg
