The Arielle Portfolio, September 30, 1982

The 1982 Arielle portfolio is a unique project, the only instance of Newton making and publishing a portfolio of nudes of one of his fashion models. Newton had, at this date, recently left Paris and settled in Monte Carlo. After a hugely successful decade in which he had established his international reputation, he had no intention of resting on his laurels, but was determined to push himself in new directions. Ideas and inspiration could come, as ever, from a multitude of sources – a text, a film, a scene observed, a memory, a gesture, and in this instance a model.
Newton chose his models with care, requiring girls capable of projecting themselves with assurance in the roles they would play in his usually highly-charged scenarios. He saw great potential in Arielle, choosing her to lead an ambitious fashion story, ‘Ritratto di signora in nero’, for the Italian magazine Amica. This was published over eighteen pages and the cover (7 September 1982). The present series of nudes was made at this time, a characteristic instance of Newton pursuing a personal project in the context of a commission. .
Ten years later, in 1992, three nudes from the Arielle series were included in the exhibition ‘Helmut Newton Archives de Nuit’, an important review of personal and commissioned images that illustrated the avenues Newton had explored to such great effect through the previous decade.