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With this Helmut Newton polaroid (below) in mind, I took Zora along for a night-time walk between the city's shadow-ridden structures. Paris really is the city of light - everything is illuminated. Walking from la Place de la Concorde, up the lower Champs-Elysées past the Grand and Petit Palais to the Pont Alexandre forces you to confront, with multiple stomach-flips, the gargantuan and almost frightening beauty of French Victorian (rather Belle Epoque) power. The last giants. They loom over us, eternal in their solidness. From the golden gate, rising like heaven's own door from the steps of the Petit Palais, to the winged beasts standing sentry over passing cars on the Pont, we scurry like tiny ants beneath their vast shadows. We are like the inheritants of Egypt - surrounded by relics of a vanished empire.
Helmut's girl climbed up onto the bridge in high heels. An uncharacteristic meekness suddenly came over me, so I perched instead.
Helmut Newton is possibly my biggest inspiration in fashion photography. As a result, I have pretty much all of his books (well, apart from this one, mostly because it is the most expensive book ever produced in the 20th century). So I was thrilled to add another to my collection, Helmut Newton's Polaroids. Test polaroids have now become an obsolete form of shooting preparation in the face of digital photography, and now a rare and iconic collectors item. Used to test the light or to document credits by fashion editors, they satisfied that impatient urge that we now take entirely for granted - to see how our vision translates in a photograph instantly. The book contains a wealth of test Polaroids from some of Newton's greatest shoots, and the quality and intensity of the colours is staggering. Sadly, the quality of the 'fake' Polaroid film available today as a result of the efforts of the Impossible Project falls far below the standard. However, give them time, they really are attempting 'the Impossible'. Having spent the weekend shooting with my Dad around Paris on medium format 6x6 (each film only contains 8 photos) and has to be developed using a special oversized projector, I can understand the desire for that confirmation of a shot, the spontaneity of a Polaroid print. Here are some of my Polaroid picks from the book.
Test Polaroids of Lily Cole & Gemma Ward from the April 2004 Vogue cover shoot. Read how I came about them courtesy of Vogue here My two favourite shots
