An Inhabited Space: Helmut Newton’s Lovers

Richard Sowada is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne’s School of Culture and Communication. His thesis examines the relationship communities have with the screen industry through architecture, technology and places of reception and they way in which they can influence sector development.

The images described in this post are still in copyright and cannot be published. Researchers may access the originals in the Baillieu Library Reading Room. 

Many elements in the photographic collection of the Commercial Traveller’s Association share an eeriness. In their composition, there’s a sense of a crime scene without a crime. We see scenic locations without tourists. Restaurants without diners. Bars without drinkers. Kiosks without customers. Offices without clerks. Schools without pupils. Cities without people.

While mostly empty of inhabitants, these landscapes and locations are also filled with detail, stark contrast and sharp architectural forms. The lack of habitation compels us to examine the unblemished qualities of the locations without the pre-determined emotion of people exploring or enjoying their surroundings. They wait for habitation – perhaps by you and me, where we may meet our guide and the only other inhabitant, the photographer.

While dispassionate and objective in their perspectives, much like the aforementioned crime scene photograph, our photographic guides capture places seemingly untouched by opinion and subjectivity. Nonetheless, there are some personal statements in the apparent objectivity. With them come significant departures in style and content from a large part of the collection, which other blog posts here have described, mostly depict open space, rural and regional locations and what constitutes a potentially mythological version of Australia. Unfortunately for the casual browser of the collection, some of these more individual perspectives are withheld from public view for copyright reasons. On access to them however, we discover some creative surprises, from some significant twentieth century Australian photographers: Gordon F. De’Lisle (1923-2002).

Let’s begin with Gordon F. De’Lisle’s striking modernist statements which the metadata notes are photographs taken within the Commercial Traveller’s Association member’s building: Three women in an interior of reception/waiting area (cat ref: 02694), Bar and bar tenders (cat ref: 02671) and Interior and entrance (cat ref: 02696).  De’Lisle’s work shows people compartmentalised and contained, separated from each other by architecture, trapped in design and restrained by service barriers. The individuals are distant and indistinguishable in the frame and are involved in the business of servicing invisible customers. Are we to admire the apparent modern efficiency or despair at the alienation? Is it a subversive challenge or is it an observation from De’Lisle?

In the context of the Commercial Traveller’s Association, D’Lisle’s work departs significantly from other modernist photographic work of the period, most notably that of Max Dupain, whose work is less about entrapment and more about the pulsating environs of Sydney’s inner city. In terms of the Commercial Traveller’s Association Collection, however, D’Lisle’s work has more to do with that of another Melbourne photographer, Wolfgang Sievers’ (1913-2007) which depict largely empty architectural spaces waiting for industrial habitation (his work in this collection is also withheld for copyright reasons).

From the collection data, we see it contains work from many other internationally recognised photographers, of the calibre of Frederick Smithies, renowned for his breathtaking wilderness works; William Howieson, for his evocative landscapes and cityscapes; Richard C Strangman, for his work in and around the ACT; Frank Hurley, the acclaimed war photographer; Wolfgang Sievers with his focus on architecture, and De’Lisle, an urban society photographer as noted and many others, credited and uncredited. In the context of the Commercial Traveller’s Collection however, the objective, distant eye from the photographer seems to be a consistent constraint on the lens with which they view Australia.

There is however a single surprising, vibrant and elegant exception from a photographer of international repute in Helmut Newton’s Woman in pleated skirt in rural landscape (cat ref: 02710). In it, a young couple are seen enjoying themselves in what is simply defined by the collection data as a “rural setting”, on what we may presume is a summer’s day. Presented occupying full frame, the well-tailored female protagonist dominates while her out-of-focus and almost camouflaged male partner is relaxed and smiling in the background. At any moment, one might almost expect them to share a cigarette as a light summer breeze drifts across the paddock.

In this instance, Newton provides us with a complete narrative and character interaction between people and their environment in a way not seen elsewhere in the collection. In this photograph, he presents us with a what we presume is a romantic interlude that by its proximity, invites us to join their intimacy rather than observe the scene from a distance. We enter a frame inhabited not by landscape but by people, and more importantly by an emotion that has a past, present and future. In terms of its place in the Commercial Traveller’s Collection, this sudden glimpse of a couple stands as a unique narrative moment, where for a singular instance we are asked to participate.