Opening: "Rooms / Stages" and "Helmut Newton's One-off Album"

In the organizer's words:

We are opening our double summer exhibitions on 4 June, 8PM!

Explore how Helmut Newton and contemporary photographers transform spaces for their images in the group show Rooms / Stages and dive into Newton's world with Helmut Newton's One-off Album.

Rooms / Stages shifts our attention to the space in a photograph. The artists in this group exhibition are represented by one body of work each. They consciously incorporate the space into their staged portraits, use long exposures to let people or dancers disappear, or focus on deserted interiors. The works range from artists' own studio, with shifting furniture, to museums in Versailles or actual stages. Beyond framed photographs, sections of the exhibition space are accentuated by wall-sized photographic murals.

Helmut Newton transformed diverse locations into stages, as the second part of the group exhibition demonstrates. These settings include luxurious hotel rooms and lobbies in Paris, Milan, and New York, and - in a 180-degree turn - raw exterior settings in Monte Carlo, even his own garage. In doing so, he created a stark contrast to the exclusive fashion designs of the 1990s, capturing the zeitgeist of the era. Newton operated like a film director and set designer on the stages he created. We encounter these motifs as giant wall murals and a wealth of Polaroids in the display cases before them.

Helmut Newton's One-off Album is devoted to an album assembled by Helmut Newton in 1999 for collector Gert Elfering, now in the Nicola Erni Collection. The selection includes iconic fashion photographs as well as never-before-exhibited working shots taken behind the scenes, Polaroids, and advertising images. After having been presented at her collection spaces in Switzerland, the album is now on view in Berlin for the first time. It comprises 103 small-format original prints in black-and-white and color, in various dimensions. Selected by Newton and Elfering, the prints were mounted on card stock and annotated by hand with a title or anecdote. The mounted photographs were not bound at the time; they have since been individually framed and can now be viewed side by side.