Philippe Halsman (Филипп Халсман; Latvian: Filips Halsmans; 2 May 1906 Riga, Russian Empire - 25 June 1979 New York City) was an American portrait photographer.


Life and work

Born to a Jewish family of Morduch (Max) Halsman, a dentist, and Ita Grintuch, a grammar school principal, in Riga, Halsman studied electrical engineering in Dresden.

In September 1928, Halsman went on a hiking tour in the Austrian Alps with his father, Morduch. During this tour, Morduch died from severe head injuries. The circumstances were never completely clarified and Halsman was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for patricide. The case provoked anti-Jewish propaganda and thus gained international publicity, and Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann wrote in support of Halsman. Halsman was released in 1931, under the condition that he leave Austria for good, never to return.

Halsman consequently left Austria for France. 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, and closely cropped images that shunned the old soft focus look. When France was invaded, Halsman fled to Marseille and he eventually managed to obtain a U.S. visa[citation needed], aided by family friend Albert Einstein (whom he later famously photographed in 1947).

Halsman had his first success in America when the cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden used his 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 Lilly Daché hat, was his first of the many covers he would do for Life.

In 1941 Halsman met the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and they began to collaborate 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 in mid air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí's work Leda Atomica which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats. Halsman reported that it took 28 attempts to be satisfied with the result. Halsman and Dali eventually released a compendium of their collaborations in the 1954 book Dali's Mustache, which features 36 different views of the artist's distinctive mustache. Another famous collaboration between the two was In Voluptas Mors, a surrealistic portrait of Dali beside a large skull, in fact a tableau vivant composed of seven nudes. Halsman took three hours to arrange the models according to a sketch by Dali. A version of In Voluptas Mors was used subtly in the poster for the film The Silence of The Lambs, and recreated in a poster for the film The Descent.

n 1947, he made what was to become one of his most famous photos of a mournful Albert Einstein, who during the photography session recounted his regrets about his role in the United States pursuing the atomic bomb. The photo would later be used in 1966 on a U.S. postage stamp and in 1999, on the cover of Time, when Time dubbed Einstein as "Person of the Century."

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 including the Ford family, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Marilyn Monroe, María Félix 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."The photographer developed a philosophy of jump photography, which he called jumpology. He published Philippe Halsman's Jump Book in 1959, which contained a tongue-in-cheek discussion of jumpology and 178 photographs of celebrity jumpers.

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".

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 the cover of Life.

In 1952, John F. Kennedy had two photograph sittings by Halsman. The result was that one photograph from the first sitting appeared on the jacket of the original edition of Profiles in Courage. In the second sitting a photograph was used in the senatorial campaign.

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 held numerous large exhibitions worldwide.

The Halsman trial was dramatized in the 2007 film Jump!, in which Halsman was portrayed by Ben Silverstone.



His work


Constance Ford ( "Victory Red" )
(1924-1993)
Philippe Halsman
Gelatin silver print, 1941
National Portrait Gallery
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman


Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Philippe Halsman
Gelatin silver print, 1947
Halsman Family Collection
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Frank Sinatra (1915-1998)
Philippe Halsman
Gelatin silver print, 1944
Halsman Family Collection
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993)
Philippe Halsman
Gelatin silver print, 1954
National Portrait Gallery
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962)
Philippe Halsman
Gelatin silver print, 1952
National Portrait Gallery
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Life, April 7, 1952
Image courtesy Life Magazine
Copyright TIME Inc.



Dorothy Dandridge (1920-1965)
Philippe Halsman
Gelatin silver print, March 3, 1953
National Portrait Gallery
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Bob Hope (born 1903)
Philippe Halsman
Silver gelatin print, 1950 or 1952
Halsman Family Collection
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968)
Philippe Halsman
Gelatin silver print, 1961
Halsman Family Collection
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)
Philippe Halsman
Gelatin silver print, 1967
Halsman Family Collection
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Dali Atomicus/ Philippe Halsman/Gelatin silver print, 1947
Halsman Family Collection
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman




Duke (1894-1972)
and Duchess (1896-1986)
of Windsor
Philippe Halsman
Gelatin silver print, 1956
Halsman Family Collection
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Philippe Halsman (1906-1979)
Self portrait
Gelatin silver print
Halsman Family Collection
Image Copyright the Estate of Philippe Halsman



Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, 1951.



Dali, Popcorn Nude, 1949.



Audrey Hepburn, 1955.




Donald O’Conner, 1952.



Edward Villela, 1961.



Danny Kaye, 1954.



Philippe Halsman and Marilyn Monroe, 1954.



Gisele MacKenzie, 1956.



Professeur J. Robert Oppenheimer



Marilyn Monroe



Jean Seberg



Richard Nixon



Harold Lloyd



Jane Mansfield



Merce Cunningham et Martha Graham



Brigitte Bardot



Salvador Dali



Aldous Huxley



Hattie Jacques


More of his Work


Salvador Dali
Atomicus, variants, 1949
6- 3 1/2 x 4 1/2" vintage silver prints
Unique set



Brigette Bardot (contact sheet), 1951
8 x 10" silver print



Five Choreographers, 1951
14 x 11" silver print
Printed by Yvonne Halsman
Stamped on verso



Ballet on Beach, 1948
10 x 8" silver print
Printed by Yvonne Halsman
Stamped on verso



Diana Dors, 1956
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso



David Seymour "Chim"
with Jane and Irene Halsman, 1957
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso



Grace Kelly, 1959
14 x 11" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso



Jackie Gleason, 1955
10 x 8" silver print
Stamped on verso



Jack Dempsey, 1954
20 x 16" silver print
Stamped on verso



J Fred Muggs, 1953
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso



Janet Leigh, 1951
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso



Dali with three girls, 1949
14 x 11" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso



The Cat Girl, Lilly Christine, 1953
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Signed on verso



Weegee, 1961
20 x 16" silver print
Printed later
Stamped on verso



Marilyn Monroe, 1959
40 x 30" c-print, edition 5
Printed 2010
Stamped on verso



Daytona Beach, 1947
14 x 11" silver print
Printed by Yvonne Halsman
Stamped on verso



Phil Silvers, 1955
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso



Jerome Robbins with Students, 1959
2 - 8 x 10" silver prints
Printed by Yvonne Halsman
Stamped on verso



Sophia Loren, 1959
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso



Murray Kempton, 1956
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso



Mike Wallace, 1957
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso





Edward Steichen, 1955
10 x 8" vintage silver print
Stamped on verso


More Photos
















Etats Unis. New York City. US photographer Philippe HALSMAN with his wife Yvonne in their studio. On the ground are some of the 99 covers realized for the magazine "Life".


USA. NYC. 1969. Svetlana ALLILUYEVA (also known as Lana Peters), daughter of Joseph Stalin, who defected to the United States in 1967.



USA. Massachusetts. Hyannis Port. US senator Robert KENNEDY.