Over the past two decades, Helmut Newton's world of images has acquired a distinctive place in contemporary photography.

Helmut Newton, who was born in 1920 in Berlin, emigrated to Australia in 1938, and currently lives in Monte Carlo and Los Angeles. He is a photographer and cosmopolitan figure, made famous especially by his fashion and nude photographs, which since 1974 have regularly appeared as commissioned work in famous magazines such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Lui and Stern

At the same time, the art world has also taken notice of the unusual and bizarre features of Newton's work. At least since the retrospective of the Musee d'art moderne de la ville de Paris in winter 1984/85, Helmut Newton's black-and-white images have attracted the attention of, and cross-fire from art critics.

Nunerous museum exhibitions followed the Paris premiere: Turin, Groningen, Vienna, London, Madrid, Tokyo and Moscow are some of the places where his pictures have been exhibited. Widely circulatedthrough book publications, his images have become indelible contemporary icons.

This exhibition, that after Hamburg, Bottrop, Winrethur and Turin, is presented now in Thessaloniki, puts less emphasis on the retrospective aspect than on the various thematic areas that Helmut Newton's work deal with. In addition to the well-known areas of fashion and nude photography, equally masterfull portraits, cityscapes, night scenes and ballet images are presented.

The exhibition also shows Helmut Newton as the creator of brilliant colour photographs, an area that has recently gained importance in his work. With the exception of his polaroids, the exhibition includes all the thematic spheres found in his extensive work, and also presents a considerable number of photographs to the public for the first time.

From fashion photography to portraiture, from nude studies to images from the world of ballet, from the erotic to the topic of death - Newton's work encompasses a truly ample wealth of themes, also embodying facets of the mass-media world of glamour, masquerade and show. Newton's genius lies in not being dazzled by this world, but illuminating and exposing it. His voyerism is linked with the dissecting gaze of an observer who is less interested in the outward sheen of what he sees than its significance and complexity.