Perverts Palace

I side with my friend Ulrika that there are only two types of pervert, those who know they are and those that don't (know they are) but in general the Germans have less of a problem with perversity than the English. The Helmut Newton Museum, also the home of the National Museum of Photography, is for instance grandly situated in an old Wehrmacht officers club (look at the width of the staircase- post below) and celebrates the 'Helm' to the Max, down to his clothes and his car and just about everything else. Walking in to oceans of Helmut Newton pictures is a bit like wading your way through a box of chocolats, it may not make you feel very well after a while, but it is worth the experience once or twice, and certainly should be obligatory for every present day female Guardian columnist, to remind them, at least, that Vogue is as pornographic as Nuts.
Helmut Newton had of course left Germany for Australia. The irony should not be lost, and the man was lucky, things fell in to place, and you can tell he enjoyed himself as any man with the Riviera touch or roosting in the Chateaux Marmont surrounded by beautiful women should; he did remarkably demeaning, pornographic things with them for the public to enjoy. But nobody really thought it was porn, they enjoyed it as art (especially Charlotte Rampling) and here it all is, the greatest porn palace that isn't this side of a anywhere truly smutty, but with the byline that here, at least, everybody featured is obscenely rich. Indeed, the proclivities of the rich are pornographic. Helmut shows us this, especially when they are fabulously rich, after all what else is there to do? It is all very Marquis de Sade, and very instructive as to the mores of the bourgeoisie that this stuff is acceptable, even laudable, and other stuff isn't. David Cameron should also pencil in a visit.
In England the Met used to measure 'porn' vs 'art' by the quality of the paper. It is one of those injustices that permanently blights the life of ordinary working girls, strippers, dancers and so on, simply that they are not rich.
Above, Helmut's jeep, just about the most pornographic thing I can imagine.