Richard Avedon's fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century.

Helmut Newton created a unique body of work that was both highly commercial and very private, capturing a world of glamour, wealth, decadence, and eroticism, both real and imagined

In this special portfolio, selected for American Photo by his wife and collaborator, June, we glimpse his deepest obsessions and, as four of his friends note, his long love affair with photography.