Sumo Book 1999

Year1999

Hand SignedTitle Page Inside 

Condition Excellent - dust cover has small tear 

Purchased fromPublisher 1999 

Provenance / HistoryPurchased directly from Taschen by Actress Lisa Marie Smith 

Story / Additional InfoThe Sumo was Published by Taschen in 2000, a limited edition of 10,000 copies. Current Taschen list price is $20,000.Book is signed by Helmut Newton himself. Dimensions: 47 x 31.5 x 6. Stand: stainless steel, designed by Philippe Starck. Bringing an entirely new slant to the concept of the coffee-table book, SUMO is a suitably enormous homage to Helmut Newton, the master of subversive and erotic photography. 'I wanted to build a monument to the most important photographer of the 20th century,' comments Benedikt Taschen, the publisher behind SUMO. Weighing over 65 pounds, measuring more than two feet long, and breaking any previous size record in book publishing, SUMO contains 480 pages of every aspect of Newton's outstanding career in photography. Each copy of the book is bound by hand and numbered and signed by the artist. In order to showcase this colossus, the book is packaged with its own stand designed by Philippe Starck.This out sized volume contains the body of Newton's controversial yet iconographic work, documenting fashion, fetishism, and above all an overriding obsession with voyeurism that can make the viewer feel complicit or uneasy by turns. Newton himself describes SUMO as "terrifying and outrageous. I don't even look at it as a book.... I look at it as an object." --Catherine Taylor, HELMUT NEWTON'S SUMO WINS INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY'S 1999 INFINITY AWARD AT MAY 11 CEREMONY Helmut Newton's SUMO published by TASCHEN has been judged the Best Book on Photography Published in 1999 by world-renowned International Center of Photography.nnSUMO, the biggest and most costly book ever produced, was judged best in a field of outstanding photography books published in the last year of the 20th century. Conceived as a monumental tribute to Helmut Newton, arguably the most influential and controversial of contemporary photographers, SUMO has become a star in its own right by winning this honor in a field filled with worthy books devoted to photography.' About the Author Helmut Newton (1920-2004) was one of the most influential photographers of all time. He first achieved international fame in the 1970s while working principally for French Vogue, and became celebrated for his controversial scenarios, bold lighting, and striking compositions in street or interior settings, rather than studios. His many titles and awards included Commandeur de l Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. 

Certificate of AuthenticityTaschen 

LID103011

Helmut Newton - Germany

Art Brokerage: Helmut Newton German-Australian Artist: b. 1920-2004. Helmut Newton (born Helmut Neustädter; 31 October 1920 – 23 January 2004) was a German-Australian photographer. He was a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications." Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara "Claire" (née Marquis) and Max Neustädter, a button factory owner. His family was Jewish. Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American School in Berlin. Interested in photography from the age of 12 when he purchased his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva (de) (Elsie Neulander Simon) from 1936. The increasingly oppressive restrictions placed on Jews by the Nuremberg laws meant that his father lost control of the factory in which he manufactured buttons and buckles; he was briefly interned in a concentration camp on Kristallnacht, 9 November 1938, which finally compelled the family to leave Germany. Newton's parents fled to South America. He was issued with a passport just after turning 18 and left Germany on 5 December 1938. At Trieste he boarded the Conte Rosso (along with about 200 others escaping the Nazis), intending to journey to China. After arriving in Singapore he found he was able to remain there, first briefly as a photographer for the Straits Times and then as a portrait photographer. Helmut Newton's studies of nude women became his signature and the self-obsessed and often distant poses of the models frequent caused polemic in the art-world. He won the sobriquets "King of Kink" and Prince of Porn" in the 1970s after the publication of his erotic photo book "White Women." Listings wanted.