Who's afraid of Helmut Newton? I am. More specifically, I'm afraid that I'll have to lift or move our signed limited edition copy of Newton's
Sumo one more time. It weighs 66 pounds, and if I drop it on my foot I'll be in a cast for weeks.
So heavy and unwieldy that it shipped with a custom folding stand, Sumo is the kind of art object you either love, or hate. According to Taschen, the book's publisher, it was the most expensive book production of the 20th century.
Having escaped Germany in 1938, Helmut Newton forged a career in fashion photography that spanned over 30 years. (You can check out his biography on Vogue.com.) He was killed in 2004 when his car crashed into a wall of the famous Chateau Marmont in Beverly Hills, and his ashes are buried in Berlin, next to Marlene Dietrich.
As everyone knows, you can never be too thin or too rich. Though we have only one copy of the signed limited edition of Sumo, Powell's does stock the trade edition. It weighs in at a slim 15.7 pounds.
And many thanks to Matthew, Gary, and Michael Powell for helping me wrestle with the 66-pound copy of Sumo.