Lot Essay
‘Inspired by the German police’s life-size identity photographs of political terrorists, I began in 1980 two of my most successful series of nudes. Because of the liberal attitudes of both French and Italian Vogue, they agreed to feature these photographs prominently, giving them a great number of editorial pages. The Big Nudes were some of my rare photographs taken in the studio. The Naked and Dressed presented probably the biggest technical problems…there was a considerable time lag between the two versions. I had to match the exact movement of the model to each version with the help of many Polaroids.’ Helmut Newton