Helmut Newton Quotations

I did find a wonderful girl last year, but the photographs that we did were more about motorcars.

The photographs don't arouse me. All I can think about is the hard work it took to make them.

I was lucky to have my wife as the art director, and it turned out to be quite something - a great success. I'm very proud of it.

The first 10 000 shots are the worst.

I find myself, after all these years, with a built-in safety-brake that stops me from doing certain things. And one of the reasons why I want to try so called hard pornography - I don't even know whether it's hard enough - is to see whether I will be able to overcome this. Because if there is one thing I hate, it's good taste, to me it's a dirty word.

It's quite true that what I am aiming at, even when I take portraits, is to get a scandalous picture. I would love to be a paparazzo.

I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.

In my vocabulary there are two bad words: art and good taste.

Genius and taste don't go together.

They often ask me to shoot for them. But I say no. I think an old guy like me ought not take pages away from young photographers who need the exposure.