Philippe Halsman

Philippe Halsman (2 May 1906 Riga, Latvia - 25 June 1979 New York City) was a Latvian-born American portrait photographer.

Born to a Jewish family of Max Halsman, a dentist, and Ita Grintuch, a grammar school principal, in Latvia. Halsman studied electrical engineering in Dresden, but moved into photography in Paris in 1931. He began contributing to fashion magazines such as Vogue and soon gained a reputation as one of the best portrait photographers in France renowned for his sharp, dark images, shunning the old soft focus look. When France was invaded, Halsman fled to Marseille and eventually managed to obtain a U.S. visa, aided by family friend Albert Einstein (whom he later famously photographed in 1947). He had his first success when the cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden used Halsman's image of model Constance Ford against the American flag in an advertising campaign for "Victory Red" lipstick. A year later in 1942 he found work with Life, photographing hat designs, one of which, a portrait of a model in a Lily Daché hat was his first of the many covers he would do for Life.

In 1947 he took what was to become one of his most famous photos of a mournful Albert Einstein, who during the photography session recounted his regrets in his role in the United States pursuing the atomic bomb. The Einstein photo was used in 1966 as an 8 cent US postage stamp.

Dali Atomicus, 1948, photo by Halsman.

In 1941 Halsman met the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and they began collabarating in the late 1940s. The 1948 work Dali Atomicus explores the idea of suspension depicting three cats flying, a bucket of thrown water, and Salvador Dalí all in mid air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí's own work Leda Atomica (which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats). It took 28 attempts for Halsman to be satisfied with the result. Halsman and Dali eventually released a compendium of their collabarations in the 1954 book Dali's Mustache.

In 1951 Halsman was commissioned by NBC to photograph various popular comedians of the time including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Groucho Marx and Bob Hope. While photographing the comedians doing their acts he captured many of the comedians in mid air which went on to inspire many later jump pictures of celebrities such as the Ford family, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Richard Nixon. Halsman commented:

"When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears."

A collection of the jump pictures Philippe Halsman's Jump Book was published in 1959.

His 1961 book "Halsman on the Creation of Photographic Ideas", discussed ways for photographers to produce unusual pieces of work, by following three rules: "the rule of the unusual technique", "the rule of the added unusual feature" and "the rule of the missing feature".

One of Halsman's famous jump photos of Marilyn Monroe.

Other celebrities photographed by Halsman include Alfred Hitchcock, Judy Garland, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge and Pablo Picasso. Many of those photographs appeared on front covers of Life.

In 1958 Halsman was listed in Popular Photography's "World's Ten Greatest Photographers", and in 1975 he received the "Life Achievement in Photography Award" from the American Society of Magazine Photographers. He also has held numerous large exhibitions worldwide.