Following the major 2019 exhibition Body Performance at the Helmut Newton Foundation, the thematic sequel Rooms / Stages now shifts our attention deliberately from the performative act to the space itself.

During preproduction for feature films, location scouts are dispatched to find settings suitable for specific scenes. In the finished film, however, we focus less on these scenic spaces than on the actors, their roles, and the overall narrative. In photography, we likewise rarely perceive a room as a visual motif in itself – unless the photographer consciously asserts the space as the primary subject.

The artists in this group exhibition are represented by one body of work each. They consciously incorporate the space into their staged portraits, use long exposures to let people or dancers disappear, or focus on deserted interiors. These empty spaces range from artists’ own studio, with shifting furniture, to museums in Versailles or Dresden, where we inevitably envision specific scenarios. Beyond framed photographs, sections of the exhibition space are accentuated by wall-sized photographic murals. The presentation includes elaborate spatial interventions created solely for a single photograph, inhospitable yet perfectly designed subway tunnels in Berlin and London, as well as images from dance and theatre.

Helmut Newton, whose work is constantly recontextualized through evolving presentations at his Berlin foundation, transformed diverse locations into stages, as the second part of the group exhibition demonstrates. These settings include luxurious hotel rooms and lobbies in Paris, Milan, and New York from his fashion photographs of the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, and – in a 180-degree turn – raw exterior settings in Monte Carlo, even his own garage. In doing so, he created a stark contrast to the exclusive fashion designs of the 1990s, capturing the zeitgeist of the era. Newton operated like a film director and set designer on the stages he created. The exhibition presents these interiors from his fashion work alongside several of his theater photographs, such as those produced in 1983 in Wuppertal with Pina Bausch for The New Yorker, or from the mid-1980s for the program booklets of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. We encounter these motifs as giant wall murals and a wealth of Polaroids in the display cases before them.

A special exhibition of the Helmut Newton Foundation at the Museum für Fotografie