Alice Springs

June Newton was a successful actress

Alice Springs was born in Melbourne, Australia on 3 June 1923 with the name June Brown, changing to June Newton on her marriage to the photographer Helmut Newton (1920-2004). At the age of five, she had to come to terms with her parents' divorce; she initially began a career as an actress and celebrated her first successes under the stage name June Brunell - her birth name June Brown had already been taken by another actress - when she met the young and still largely unknown German photographer Helmut Newton, who had fled to Australia to escape the Nazis. Although she won the Erik Kutter Award as a theatre actress in Melbourne in 1956, she accompanied her husband to London the following year, where he had received a one-year contract with British Vogue. June Newton found a job at the BBC, but at the instigation of her husband, who did not feel comfortable in London, the couple moved on to Paris, where Helmut Newton's star as a photographer finally rose.

Alice Springs learnt photography from Helmut Newton 

June Newton initially worked on her husband's projects in Paris and also learnt the craft of photography herself in his studio. When Helmut Newton was unable to fulfil an order for the French cigarette brand Gitanes due to a bout of flu, June Newton jumped in and photographed the required images herself. This was the beginning of her career as a photographer, for which her husband requested that she choose a pseudonym. To find a name, she simply stuck a pin blindly into the map of Australia and hit Alice Springs. In 1974, a picture by her under the name Alice Springs appeared for the first time on the cover of the French magazine Elle. Her successful advertising campaigns were soon joined by a large number of portrait commissions; June Newton photographed the famous personalities of her time as Alice Springs, including Catherine Deneuve, Roy Lichtenstein, Graham Greene, Christopher Reeve, Yves Saint Laurent, Anthony Burgess and Nicole Kidman. In her portraits, Alice Springs usually focused on the faces of her subjects, also benefiting from her experience as an actress when she looked behind the facade with her camera.

Great international success as a portrait photographer

Alice Springs continued to supervise her husband's work during her successful career as a portrait photographer and also featured in some of his photographs. She shot the documentary Helmut by June for the French television channel Canal Plus, which US director Brett Ratner expanded to include an interview with June Newton and brought to cinemas. June Newton, alias Alice Springs, and Helmut Newton also frequently photographed each other, and the pictures were collected and published in the book Us and Them. Her own pictures appeared in magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Elle, Interview and Stern. June Newton lived with her husband in Paris for 27 years before moving to Monte Carlo and spending the winter months in Los Angeles.

Alice Springs died on 9 April 2021 in Monte Carlo in the Principality of Monaco.