I love photography, especially that which captures history through people. So there was a photography museum in Berlin. A must see. With the top floor dedicated to Helmut Newton, a famous photographer, of whom I had never heard.

As I waited in the comforting museum silence for jackets to be deposited, and bathroom breaks to be taken, I watched the blank walls with what I thought were no expectations, ready to put a tick in the box, and file it under done.

In a group of three, we headed up the spiral staircase, our cold, wet boots sinking into the royal red carpet. As I lifted my head towards the top of the stairs, there they stood, four fantastic naked females, captured life-size, walking towards us in black and white, flesh emerging from delicate slits between their thighs, with stomachs taut and breasts bouncing, a masterfully shocking image to welcome my unprepared eyes.

Feeling the stream of consciousness in my brain forcefully interrupted by the plain nakedness and unmistaken sexuality of these women, my body continued to walk forward as my damned Irish soul slowly tumbled down the staircase behind me.

Arriving a few minutes later, dusted down and somewhat put back together, it wavered and trembled in front of photo after photo of exceptionally beautiful women, perfect and shiny, in surprising and imaginative erotic postures, at times fondling themselves with exuberance.

It felt uncomfortable to be examining each of these women in such a large open space with other people around. It made me even more uncomfortable that I was not comfortable. I copied the other voyeurs and acted as though these were paintings of flowers, trying to time my movement so that I was spending an equal amount of time on each appendage, on each masterfully captured anatomical crevice.

Over and over again they posed and flaunted themselves, showed off and taunted with their sexuality, until the clear message erupted from my subconscious: there is nothing to be ashamed of. I began to see what the photographer had captured in each of these images: a moment of pure erotic beauty.

Overcoming the discomfort, I started to admire them. At one stage, I wanted to have such a photograph of myself, to look back on in years to come to admire my beauty, and my fearlessness.

Admiration turned to envy, as I wanted so desperately what they appeared to have, and it turned to anger as I raged against the fact that it would never happen. It was so confusing to admire them for their beauty and fearlessness, yet hate them for reminding me that this version of beauty is a standard we cannot all reach.

On remembering that these were moments in time, long since passed, all of my anger flowed away, and I saw the fragility of beauty. As women, our shape changes, our fertility wanes and our ability to draw the attention of the men in a room dissipates. These photographs were creating an illusion of eternal beauty, which no one can maintain.

At a certain stage, our guide took a position next to me to admire the images, and my emotional state changed once more. I disconnected from the window of deep understanding, and plummeted back into my primitive self once more.

I was itching with discomfort, wondering how he could be so nonchalant, and I spent the next 5 minutes mentally practising the tone of "relaxed" in case he would be so bold as to point out some erotic posture and ask my opinion on whether the photographer was deliberate in his intent... or some such intellectual nonsense.

Luckily he didn't ask my advice, but I was ashamed of myself, to be so unprepared for such an experience, so I set myself some homework for the weekend:

Step 1: Go into Easons, pull a playboy off the shelf and flick through in front of everyone.

Step 2: Find a particularly erotic image, and ask the person next to me what message he/she thinks the photographer was trying to communicate.

Step 3: Discuss.

Anyone dare me to do it? ;)

By the way, here is a link to the photographer, Helmut Newton, and here is the image that greeted me at the top of the stairs. Ya ya, no big deal you say, but that's only because I told you all about it ;)



As you can see - "a must see".