June Browne

June Newton (née Browne, 3 June 1923 – 9 April 2021) was an Australian model, actress, and photographer. As an actress she was known professionally as June Brunel or Brunell and won the Erik Award for Best Actress in 1956. From 1970 onward she worked as a photographer under the pseudonym Alice Springs. Her photographs have appeared in publications such as Vanity Fair, Interview, Elle and Vogue.

She was the wife of the fashion photographer Helmut Newton. Her parents divorced when she was five years old. At the time, June was working as an actress under the surname Brunell (to avoid confusion with a local actress named June Brown) Although she was finding success in Australia as an actress, Helmut was offered a year-long contract with British Vogue

Photography June's work as a photographer began in 1970 when she stepped in for her husband who had fallen ill. Helmut was scheduled to photograph a model for an ad for Gitanes cigarettes when he came down with the flu. She selected the name by blindly stabbing a pin into a map of Australia.

Over her career, Alice Springs' photographs appeared in magazines such as Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Vanity Fair, Interview, and Stern.

Throughout her photographic career, Newton continued to work as her husband's art director, acting both as editor and curator of Helmut's work.

Helmut by June The Newtons lived in Paris for 27 years and then moved to Monte Carlo — spending winters in Los Angeles for three months of the year. The majority of the footage for the documentary was shot by June in the 1990s using a video camera that she had purchased for her husband as a Christmas present. June's footage was edited to a one-hour film that was shown in France. The Helmut Newton Foundation opened in Berlin in June of that same year.

Permanently located in the Museum of Photography in Berlin, the Helmut Newton Foundation is in a building that stands next to the train station from which Helmut left Berlin to escape the Nazis in 1938.

Publications Alice Springs: Portraits (Twelvetrees Press, 1986) Us and them (Scalo, 1999) Mrs. Newton (Taschen, 2004)

Filmography Helmut Newton: Frames from the Edge (1989), as herself Helmut by June (1995), as herself