Helmut Newton dies in car crash

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Internationally renowned fashion photographer Helmut Newton has died after a car wreck in Hollywood. He was 83.

Newton made his mark with sexually provocative black-and-white shots of tall, elegantly dressed women in dangerous situations, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Police said Newton's car went out of control Friday and careened across the Chateau Marmont Hotel, crashing into a retaining wall across the street. Newton died shortly after being taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital. The cause of death had not been determined, but friends said he may have had a heart attack.

Born in 1920 to a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin, Newton bought his first camera at age 12.

As a teenager, he was apprenticed to the German theatrical photographer Yva, who was also fond of the naked female form. At 18, however, he was forced to flee the Nazis, eventually arriving in Singapore, where, he wrote, he became a gigolo.

Newton later moved to Australia and served in the Australian Army for five years before opening his first photography studio in Melbourne. In 1948 he married June Browne, a photographer who uses the name Alice Springs professionally. She is his only survivor.

After working as a freelancer for Elle and other magazines in the 1940's, he moved to France in the late 50s.