This article illustrates perfectly why it’s important to work with a reputable dealer or auction house that knows the artist’s work and has access to the Estate or Foundation if there are questions about the artwork. —Stoots

artnet News | Alexander FORBES – 9 June 2014

The online art market is being flooded with forged photographs purporting to be originals by nude master Helmut Newton. According to the Helmut Newton Foundation, forgeries have been a long-running issue for the photographer who died in 2004. Yet the expansion, in recent years, of online selling platforms on which works are not vetted has made the regulation of fakes nearly impossible.

“It’s hard to get them off the market,” Helmut Newton Foundation curator Matthias Harder told artnet News. “At the big auction houses you have a contact person you can speak with,” he said. “But with the online platforms it’s difficult because there’s no one. It’s just a private person selling to a private person.”

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