David Lynch, Helmut Newton and the politics of nude photography in the #MeToo era

During the press conference for Saul Leiter. David Lynch. Helmut Newton: Nudes last Friday at Berlin’s Helmut Newton Foundation, a speaker from the audience piped up and put it to the Foundation’s curator, Mattias Harder, why would he choose to put on a show almost entirely — save for one or two — of nude women in the #MeToo era? His answer was honest, if naive, “The exhibition is not intended to be a political statement”. That might be true, but much like the age-old puzzle — can the actions of the artist ever be separated from the art? — can the art ever be separated from the society in which it exists? Is it possible to perceive an exhibition like this in a vacuum, untainted by the currents of changing social attitudes?

It’s a question that hangs over Nudes like a grey cloud that quivers with intensity at varying points. What’s immediately striking from the get-go is how each of these artists interpret the nude female body in blatantly different ways. Lynch, who is probably the biggest draw for punters, presents large-scale cinematic abstractions — or “body landscapes” as Harder referred to them as — cast in dramatic chiaroscuro and fogged with cigarette smoke. By cropping and fragmenting naked bodies, Lynch creates artfully sexy images that provide a good example of what the difference between erotic imagery and pornography might be. They are sensual and mysterious much like the glamorous red-lipped sirens of his movies. While the majority are in black in white, some are in colour — glossy and punctuated with scarlet talons and the fine outline of a crimson mouth. They leave you wanting more, desiring and deciphering the enigmatic lines of their smooth, meandering contours.

On the opposite end of the hallway, two long galleries present the nude works of German fashion photographer Helmut Newton. Newton, hardly needs an introduction, but even in the age of sexts and endless internet porn, his black and white nudes are still incredibly provocative. They scream sex, but sex not necessarily as intimate and complex and sensual, but sex as glamorous and inseparable from an idea of challenging the conservative social mores of the time they were taken (1960s-80s) — otherwise naked models wear pearls, gloves and boxy suit jackets as though they are “unleashing” their wild and sexy side for the camera. To the modern eye, the proliferation of large breasts, long supermodel legs, high heels and full-frontal nudity still warrants an eyebrow raise. Equally it’s difficult not to be struck by the presence of the clothed male photographer (Newton himself) in one of the standout images, lensing the nude female in a mid-century update of the “Great Male Artist” painting odalisques or reclining nudes in the studio.

Across the hall, the third and final artist, Saul Leiter, presents an altogether different take than the other too. These small, private snapshots depicting women, mostly friends and lovers, in various states of undress, lolling on unmade beds (sometimes masturbating) or staring unflinchingly into his camera lens, are powerful in almost entirely different ways to those by Lynch and Newton. Unlike Lynch, they are not attempting to make the body more of a art form than it already is, and unlike Newton, they do not envision the naked female body as a vehicle to play out provocations and power struggles. They have none of the theatrics of the latter two artists’ images, instead they are gentle and interesting, quiet.

Leiter gives us an indication of a nude photography that is not entirely rooted in the form of the body and the authority of the male gaze, instead hinting at a category that might be more emotive, more cerebral, even more spiritual. But although Leiter’s nudes are grounded in the unique personalities of his models rather than in the sex appeal of their bodies, inevitably we are still left wondering and wanting more, despite the incontestable beauty and poeticism of his atmospheric interpretation.

While Lynch’s, Leiter’s and Newton’s nudes can be appreciated and enjoyed for what they are — sensual, intimate and brazenly erotic respectively — it’s impossible not to be struck by the shortcomings of this exhibition. Walking through the Helmut Newton display, in particular, how can you not roll your eyes at the lack of racial and body diversity? While apart of me says, “relax — you can still appreciate this”, the larger part of me is saying, “really?”. Are we really still expected to believe that beauty and sexiness is something only available to a woman of a certain genetic profile, engineered by a specific male gaze?

Although this exhibition was probably planned long before the breaking of  the #MeToo scandal last autumn, that’s not to say that to present the work of three white male photographers photographing predominantly white nude women doesn’t seem like an archaic choice for a major institution at this moment in time. Would it not be a more viable and interesting artistic inquiry for all involved to consider what the nude taken by a woman, a transgender person, or gender non-conforming person would look like? How might their take on the form of the nude differ? After all this time, do we really need another exhibition claiming that the nude is purely the artistic property of the male gaze?

To compound matters, later this week a major Nobuyoshi Araki exhibition will open just down the road at CO Berlin. While it would be petty to say that we don’t need the work of these artists, what we do require is a multiplicity of viewpoints with regard to the visual depiction of the body and in the realm of erotic photography. Perhaps, it’s the visceral vulnerability of the photos of queer photographers, Texas Isaiah or Elle Pérez, for example, or the complicated exploration of dominance and submission in the seminal work of Jo Ann Callis, which was recently shown at Paris Photo, or maybe it’s the thoughtful introspective nudity in Chinese photographer’s Luo Yang’s work. In any case, it’s high time that the conversation was opened up to explore what a “nude” might be to someone other than the “Great Male Artist”.

Saul Leiter. David Lynch. Helmut Newton: Nudes runs through to 19 May 2019 at Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin.