WILSHIRE CENTER

No one will ever accuse Helmut Newton of mellowing with age. Known as the “King of Kink,” Newton threw open the lid on the Pandora’s Box of sadomasochism that’s always been part of fashion photography, and he continues to explore the fascism of eroticism in his photographs of frighteningly perfect women.

Rooted in an idealized fantasy of the European aristocracy, Newton’s painstakingly composed pictures take us into a sequestered world of luxurious old hotels, haute couture and diamond-hard emotions. Riddled with implications of deviant sexuality, these pictures are very cold indeed, and though Newton claims to feel nothing but admiration for the anonymous Amazons he photographs, there’s an air of degradation about his depiction of the fairer sex. We see, for instance, a woman in bondage sprawled face down on an immaculately manicured lawn; the garden in this picture is treated with more tenderness than the human subject.

More troubling is the fact that Newton has started to cannibalize his own innovations of 20 years ago. The style of photography he pioneered is presently heaving a fin de siecle sigh of death and much of his new work looks dated. One would think Newton must be getting bored with the prosthetic devices and riding crops by now, and a recent series shot in a rundown shack in Los Angeles suggests that he realizes he’s mined the sexual ennui of the idle rich for all it’s worth. One hopes so because the art world--if not the public at large--seems to have had its fill of snarling Dobermans and whips, and Newton’s work has lost the power to shock that it once had. It’s rather unsettling to realize that work once considered thoroughly outrageous has come to seem so tame.

On view in an adjoining gallery are photographs by Newton’s wife, Alice Springs. A series of classically formal portraits of artists, writers and film personalities, Springs’ pictures seem touchingly virginal contrasted with the severe sexuality of her husband’s work. Springs has a kind and respectful eye and she refrains from attempting to outfox her subjects and trick them into revealing something they may not care to share with strangers.

Photographed in their native environments--at work or at home--Springs’ subjects rarely smile. With faces regally composed, they are inscrutable, and a quality of imposing dignity is the leit motif in Springs’ work. (G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, 7224 Melrose, to March 7.)