Observations on Helmut Newton

Few who knew either of us would have thought that Helmut Newton and I would become good friends. But after working together on a story about the principality of Monaco, the glam fashion photographer (who died in a car crash a few days ago aged 83) and I drank together at the bar of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo.

I visited his flat in the city, he ate at my house in London, we looked out together at the passing world from a seafront restaurant in Santa Monica. His wife of 55 years, June, was never far from his side, professionally or personally. In Los Angeles, in particular, she was on the lookout for female faces and bodies suitable for her husband to photograph, and gave him immediate verdicts on whether they were his type or not.

Perhaps it was because I was more than a generation younger, and for odd periods became the son he and June never had; perhaps it was just that he was a convivial soul. He bestowed on me the ultimate accolade of his friendship: taking my picture with a model on the deck of a yacht in Monte Carlo harbour, developing it, autographing the back and presenting it to me. It is, I'm sure, the only photograph of me that will ever be worth good money.

But I think it was precisely because I was not interested in his world of glamour that we became friends. He must have made many millions from his pictures and enjoyed being hailed as an artistic genius; but deep down, I suspect, he abhorred the superficiality of it all. His family in Germany was well off in the 1930s, being one of the country's biggest button manufacturers. But as a teenage Jew, Helmut got out just in time, alone - to lead a torrid few years of sold sex before settling in Australia and marrying June, aka Alice Springs, a professional photographer.

He told me a good ten years ago that his fees for taking private pictures of anyone started at $18,000. He knew he was a damned good photographer and wanted to be taken seriously as such - sometimes, too, he would just use a Canon Sure Shot or some such camera that the rest of us use. But I believe he found the smooching and air-kissing of Hollywood (in which he played a major part) fascinating only for its vicarious and voyeuristic interests rather than for its friendships.

He and June had a strict annual schedule - summer in the Monte Carlo flat, then fly to LA on Christmas Day to stay at the Chateau Marmont hotel. Its very seediness and the tawdry surroundings of Sunset Boulevard were what attracted Helmut, I think. He was a true original and I will miss him.

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