From 24 April 2026 to 31 December 2027:
Before there was ethical porn, feminist gaze theory, or the language of consent culture - there was Helmut Newton. And he made no apologies.
His women were never victims. They were dominant, cold, perfectly lit, and completely aware of the camera. High heels on marble floors. Power suits with nothing underneath. Bodies that occupied space like architecture.
Newton photographed desire as a power game and made no pretense that the game was innocent.
But behind that work stood a woman the world has taken too long to see clearly.
June Browne, born in Melbourne in 1923, trained actress, successful under the stage name June Brunell met Helmut Newton in his Melbourne studio in 1947. They married a year later. She left acting behind and followed him to Europe.
For decades she was his art director, his editor, his archivist, his model, and the quiet intelligence behind every exhibition and book.
Then, in 1970, Helmut fell ill the night before a shoot for the French cigarette brand Gitanes. June picked up the camera, asked him to explain the basics, and photographed the campaign herself. That image, a model with a cigarette, shot in Paris launched a second career. She became Alice Springs, one of the most sought-after portrait photographers of her era. Her subjects ranged from Robert Mapplethorpe and Michel Foucault to Nicole Kidman and Grace Jones.
While Helmut photographed power and desire, June photographed the person behind the pose a moment of released tension, a face caught between performances.
After Helmut’s death in a car accident in 2004, June opened the Helmut Newton Foundation at the Museum für Fotografie in Berlin on her own birthday.
She ran it until her death in Monte-Carlo in 2021, at the age of 97. The foundation has recently rebranded: it is now called the Helmut & June Newton Foundation. Both names. Finally.
The new Intermezzo installation at the Museum für Fotografie brings this double story into focus. Eight projectors cast film across four screens including personal recordings by June, recently digitized from the foundation’s archives.
Nearly 100 exhibition posters line the walls. Vintage magazines - Vogue, Vanity Fair, Stern, Paris Match, Elle trace how two gazes reshaped the image of bodies across four decades. His, and hers.
You can debate Newton’s gaze. You should. But you cannot look away from it.
And now, you can finally see whose eyes were watching him.
Why we at BERLINABLE are going
Because this is exactly what we believe that the erotic image is never neutral, and that the story behind the lens matters as much as what it captures.
Helmut Newton made desire visible. June Newton made the person visible. Together, they are one of the most honest portraits of what power, beauty, and intimacy look like when two people spend a life making work side by side.
That’s not just art history. That’s the conversation we’re here for.
Before you mark your calendar: always double-check dates, location, and ticket info directly with the organizers.
Even the best promises come with fine print.