He established a particular style marked by erotic, stylised scenes, often with sado-masochistic and fetishistic subtexts. His works appeared in magazines including, most significantly, French Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. He settled in Paris in 1961 and continued work as a fashion photographer. He returned to Melbourne in March 1959 to a contract for Australian Vogue.

He left the magazine before the end of his contract and went to Paris where he worked for French and German magazines. He won a twelve-month contract with British Vogue and he left for London in February 1957. Newton's growing reputation as a fashion photographer was rewarded when he secured a commission to illustrate fashions in a special Australian supplement for Vogue magazine, published in January 1956. Newton went into partnership with Henry Talbot, a fellow German Jew who had also been interned at Tatura. The exhibition of ‘New Visions in Photography’ was held at the Federal Hotel in Collins Street and was probably the first glimpse of 'New Objectivity' photography in Australia. He shared his first joint exhibition in May 1953 with Wolfgang Sievers, a German refugee like himself who had also served in the same Company. In 1946, Newton set up a studio in fashionable Flinders Lane and worked primarily on fashion photography in the affluent post-war years. In 1948 he married actress June Browne.She later became a successful photographer known as Alice Springs.

After the war, in 1945 he became an Australian citizen, and changed his name to Newton in 1946. In April 1942, he enlisted with the Australian Army and worked as a truck driver. He was released from internment in 1942, and briefly worked as a fruit-picker in northern Victoria. Internees travelled to the camp of Tatura, Victoria by train under armed guard. After arriving in Singapore, Newton was interned by British authorities and was sent to Australia on board the 'Queen Mary'. At Trieste he boarded the 'Conte Rosso' (along with about two hundred others escaping the Nazis) intending to journey to China. He was issued with a passport just after turning 18, and left Germany on 5 December 1938. ‘Kristallnacht’ on 9 November 1938 compelled the family to leave Germany. The increasingly oppressive restrictions placed on Jews by the Nuremberg laws meant that his father lost control of the factory in which he manufactured buttons and buckles he was even briefly interned in a concentration camp. Interested in photography from the age of twelve when he purchased his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva (Else Neulander Simon) from 1936. Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter was a German-Australian fashion photographer noted for his nude studies of women.īorn to a German-Jewish button-factory owner and an American mother, Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American School in Berlin.

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