'Of the thousands of people, celebrated and unknown,
who have sat before my camera, I am often asked who was the most
difficult subject, or the easiest, or which picture is my favorite. This
last question is like asking a mother which child she likes the most.'
(Philippe Halsman, 1906-1979)
Professor J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1958
Dali with three girls, 1949
Philippe Halsman was born in
Riga, Latvia and began his photographic career in Paris. In 1934 he
opened a portrait studio in Montparnasse, where he photographed many
well-known artists and writers -- including Andre Gide, Marc Chagall, Le
Corbusier, and Andre Malraux, using an innovative twin-lens reflex
camera that he designed himself.
Halsman began a thirty-seven
year collaboration with Salvador Dali in 1941 which resulted in a stream
of unusual “photographs of ideas,” including “Dali Atomicus” and the
“Dali’s Mustache” series. In the early 1950s, Halsman began to ask his
subjects to jump for his camera at the conclusion of each sitting.
These uniquely witty and energetic images have become an important part
of his photographic legacy.
Duke & Dutchess of Windsor, 1956
Edward Steichen, 1955
Richard Nixon, 1955
Jump was born in 1952, Halsman said, after an arduous
session photographing the Ford automobile family to celebrate the
company’s 50th anniversary. As he relaxed with a drink offered by Mrs.
Edsel Ford, the photographer was shocked to hear himself asking one of
the grandest of Grosse Pointe’s grande dames if she would jump for his
camera. “With my high heels?” she asked. But she gave it a try,
unshod—after which her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Henry Ford II, wanted to
jump too.
For the next six years, Halsman ended his portrait sessions by asking
sitters to jump. It is a tribute to his powers of persuasion that
Richard Nixon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Judge Learned Hand (in
his mid-80s at the time) and other figures not known for spontaneity
could be talked into rising to the challenge of…well, rising to the
challenge. He called the resulting pictures his hobby, and in Philippe
Halsman’s Jump Book, a collection published in 1959, he claimed in the
mock-academic text that they were studies in “jumpology.”
Brigitte
"Most people
stiffen with self-consciousness when they pose for a photograph.
Lighting and fine camera equipment are useless if the photographer
cannot make them drop the mask, at least for a moment, so he can capture
on his film their real, undistorted personality and character. "
(Philippe Halsman, 1906-1979)
Philippe Halsman died in New York City on 25 June 1979.
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