Goodbye

I'm not an intellectual — I just take pictures,'' the King of Kink once mused. But as any Vogue or Vanity Fair reader knows, Helmut Newton's photographs were no mere snapshots. Through the 1970s and '80s, the Berlin-born provocateur was considered the medium's ''naughty boy,'' due to his penchant for leggy women, carnal poses, and black leather couture. His controversial juxtaposition of eroticism and fashion — what he dubbed the ''porno chic'' aesthetic — prompted both critics and admirers to reconsider art's boundaries, raising the bar for aspiring photographers to be truly visionary. (Newton died after a car crash in Los Angeles.)