Springs’ Light Touch : Using available illumination, the Australian-born photographer breaks through celebrities’ facades and devises compelling, witty portraits

Camera equipment has little to do with Australian-born photographer Alice Springs’ bold, black-and-white portraits of celebrities, artists and writers. She doesn’t even bother to bring lights to her shoots.

“I use available light, whether it’s artificial or daylight. The reason is I work alone a lot, without an assistant, and I couldn’t possibly manage to haul all the equipment that’s necessary, especially if I’m traveling,” Springs, 68, said during an interview at a West Hollywood hotel.

“I just swing the camera bag on my shoulder. Those are long corridors in airports, so I’ve got my whole little studio on my shoulder.”

Over the past 14 years, hundreds of compelling, often witty portraits have come out of Springs’ portable studio. She breaks through the facades that the rich and famous build for themselves, exposing their more human aspects--the camaraderie between old movie makers Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann, the maternal side of Princess Caroline, a rare smile from artist Joseph Beuys.

“She makes these icons and well-known people very accessible to us,” said Shoshana Blank, director of Shoshana Wayne Gallery, which opens an exhibit of 65 portraits by Springs on Friday. “Because she uses only available light and doesn’t try to stage things, she captures the different personalities so well.

“The extremely dark black in her photographs is tremendously attractive to me. It is haunting, yet rather than being repulsive or appalling, it pulls you into the photograph.”

Springs’ photography career began unexpectedly 20 years ago when her husband, fabled photographer Helmut Newton--renowned for his sexually charged fashion photographs, portraits and nudes--was ill and could not do an assignment.

“It was a Sunday and Helmut was in bed with the flu. He had a model boy waiting on the Place Vendome in Paris to be photographed,” Springs said. “I offered to go there and tell the boy Helmut was ill. I said I’ll take a camera with me and photograph him in case, just sort of the spur of the moment. I didn’t know what to do with the camera at all. Helmut gave me a couple of lessons and told me how to use the exposure meter.

“I was very nervous, but I photographed the boy. I had nothing to lose. The pictures weren’t bad. They were sent off to the client in London, and the check came back addressed to Helmut Newton. I was in business.”

Springs, whose real name is June Newton, was an actress when she met German-born Helmut Newton in Australia in 1947. He had left Germany in 1938 and spent a couple of years in Singapore before settling in Australia. They married in 1948.

They lived in Paris from 1961 to 1981, where Helmut Newton contributed to five national versions of Vogue magazine and to many other publications. For the past 18 years, they have spent the winter months in Los Angeles working on various projects. Since 1981, they have lived in Monte Carlo.

Springs said all of her photographic training came from Newton, whom she describes as a “wonderful teacher because he just sticks to the basics. He never tried to confuse me or blind me with science.”

On the other hand, Springs said, Newton obliged her to take a pseudonym. He felt that “one Newton in the photographic world was enough,” she said. “The night my first picture was about to appear, Helmut asked me what I was going to call myself. I said, ‘What else but my name?’ He said, ‘No way; you’re not taking me where you’re going,’ and he meant down there,” Springs said, pointing to the floor.

“I was with American actress Jean Seberg and her boyfriend, who was a Spanish movie director. He’d never been to Australia, but he loved everything about it. He told me to find him an atlas and a pin, and then open the atlas to Australia and close my eyes. The pin fell right into the center of Australia, onto Alice Springs. And he said, ‘There’s your name.’ So that night I became Alice Springs. I liked it straight away. And it was good. It gave me complete independence.”

Her first client was hairdresser Jean Louis David. She shot publicity stills for him that appeared in all the French magazines--Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, to name a few.

At the same time, Springs began to shoot fashion photography. “My first pictures were the best. They were really excellent, and I was on top of the world because I thought it was going to be so easy, this lovely new career that lay ahead of me,” she said. “They were for a magazine called Depeche Mode, and they were very free and easy, and amusing. Helmut was amazed. But it was beginner’s luck.

“The responsibility of spending a day trying to do eight to 10 pages of fashion before the light went, before the end of the day, before the rain came, before this and that--with the models being paid such a lot of money--was horrible. I kept on doing it, but I began photographing the people who were waiting--models or hairdressers--and my friends, taking little snaps, portraits that Helmut thought were better than the fashion pictures.”

“I said, ‘Why don’t you just do portraits? You do it so well,’ ” Newton said. “She did pictures of her friends, and then people asked her to do portraits. Then she started doing portraits for magazines. It was a natural evolution.”

Fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent with his little dog Hazel was one of her first assignments. Actress Isabelle Adjani was another.

Springs’ 1983 commission from the London Sunday Times to photograph author Graham Greene generated some jealousy in her husband. “I’m such a fan of Graham Greene, I was furious when she got the job,” Newton said. “But she did a beautiful job.”

“Although he was absolutely charming, the minute the camera was on him, it was like a blind coming down,” Springs said. “It was very hard to get that picture. I think I got it when he suddenly turned around. I was waiting to get him off guard.

“It’s a matter of trying to get through to the person and waiting for the right moment when you can do that. Joseph Beuys was laughing at something I was doing. A lot of people laugh at what I’m doing. I don’t know what I do that’s funny, but a lot of people do break up, and that’s when I photograph them.”

“I’ve watched her a few times. She’s got a lot of sense of humor,” Newton said, adding that they don’t ordinarily go on each other’s sittings.

“It’s very interesting to talk to people. They just adore her. I was taking some pictures in Antibes and this guy, he makes commercials, came up to me where I was photographing. He said, ‘Aren’t you Helmut Newton?’ I said yes. He introduced himself and said, ‘Alice photographed me. I had such a wonderful time. Nobody’s ever taken such a good picture of me.’ ”

“Most of the time, I don’t know where the person lives. I don’t know what I’m going to be confronted with. I don’t know what the decor will be like or what the lighting conditions are,” Springs said. “For the first few minutes, I nervously race around the place, ask may I go here and there, desperately looking for the right place and light. I rely terrifically on the right light and a very simple background.

“Helmut calls me the wall photographer because in desperation, I’ll often go outside and look for a wall, as long as it’s not a flat wall that resembles a studio. It doesn’t matter how dirty it is, but it must have some texture.”

“A lot of people love being photographed by her because she’s so gentle with it,” Newton said. “She’s not particularly gentle with me, ever, but she’s very gentle when she photographs. She’s very unobtrusive, and she gets to the heart of the matter.

“It’s incredible what she brings out. What she does with mothers with their babies, it’s just wild. She did marvelous pictures of Caroline of Monaco with the children.”

Springs doesn’t just sit around waiting for assignments to come her way. She seeks out people she wants to photograph. “I’ll photograph celebrities because I’m interested in them, and one can place them, or the magazines call for them,” she said. “But just as much as photographing celebrities, I like to photograph people like a vineyard worker, or the wife of my lawyer with her mother, who have great faces.”

Photographer Sheila Metzner agreed to pose for Springs. “All the time she’d given me, I used photographing her with her children in her apartment,” she said. “Then they all came down into the street to say goodby. It was that wonderful light just before night hits, twilight. We were waiting for the cab to arrive, and they were standing on the street.

“I reloaded the camera. I said, ‘I’ve got to take you all here.’ Suddenly, there was a wind blowing. They’re all perfectly still, but they look as if they’re walking.”

When she met Billy Wilder, Springs told him that she had always wanted to photograph him with Fred Zinnemann. She had often seen them having lunch together at Mister Chow’s in Beverly Hills. Wilder said that could be arranged.

“I went to Fred Zinnemann’s house,” she said. “The thing is, they hadn’t seen one another for a while, and they had an awful lot of news to catch up on. They couldn’t stop talking, and it was terribly hard to get them with their mouths closed.

“They were these two incredible movie makers who also happen to be friends, just standing there together, like young boys. There was something so youthful about them both. You could see the wonderful relationship that existed between them. I think those vibes show up a lot in pictures.”

She also perceived a good relationship between movie directors and brothers Ridley Scott (“Thelma and Louise”) and Tony Scott (“Top Gun”). “I didn’t know Ridley. I met him the day I photographed them. I’d asked Tony, who I knew, if he could set that up. They liked being photographed together.”

Springs’ 1987 portrait of Newton in Monte Carlo reveals his great set of gams. “That happened after a fancy dress party we’d been to. Helmut went to this very chic party--the theme was romance--dressed in a long blond wig and high-heeled shoes and a little skirt.

“The following day, or that week, he was sitting in the sun. I was photographing him, and my hat was there, and I said, ‘Put the hat on.’ It looked great. He said, ‘Wait a minute.’ He went in and put the high heels on.”

There is a woman who came before Newton’s camera that Springs would also like to photograph, a woman he refers to as his pin-up girl. Who could this woman be--capable of making Helmut Newton’s knees knock? None other than Margaret Thatcher.

He photographed her last year “after she abdicated,” he said, in an Anaheim hotel. She had been there to present a lecture.

“I was very nervous. I kept on telling her how much I admired her and how nervous I was. She was totally in command. She had me where she wanted me. As a rule, I’m not a shrinking wallflower. I’m not made that way. But she was incredible.

“The picture was, well, I liked the picture. June (Springs) said it looks like a passport picture. To me, she looked like a terrorist. It was like a passport picture. She looked like a shark because she doesn’t close her mouth. You know, her lips are open, her teeth are a little bit protruding, which is charming, of course. All that power in a woman is very sexy.”

Newton blew the photograph up, “two meters high,” he said. Britain’s National Portrait Gallery acquired it. “I was very proud that they acquired it. It’s the most hallowed ground.”

Newton has a show opening at the Pascal de Sarthe gallery one week after Springs’ show opens at Shoshana Wayne. During their stay here, she is also working with a producer and editors to edit video footage she shot for a documentary on Newton. She covered all his shoots over the past year and got to like the movement of a video camera.

“I’d still like to do interesting shoots,” Springs said. “But photography will become a part of something that I think might be more important to me at this moment than still photography. I wouldn’t mind doing more video. It’s opened up a lot for me.”

“Alice Springs: Portraits” opens Friday at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, 1454 5th St., Santa Monica, through March 28. Open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. Call (310) 451-3733.