Halsmann, Philippe (1906-79), Latvian-born American photographer. He taught himself photography while studying electrical engineering in Dresden in the mid-1920s, and undertook assignments for Ullstein in Berlin. After moving to Paris in 1928 he became friends with Man Ray and other avant-garde figures, and established himself with surrealistic portraits of the intellectual elite. He emigrated to the USA in 1940 and eventually became a fashion and editorial photographer for Life, for which he did a record 103 covers. Meanwhile he strengthened his reputation as one of the century's most original portraitists. Some of the numerous celebrities he photographed, including Richard Nixon, Marilyn Monroe, and the duke and duchess of Windsor, agreed to jump for his camera (Philippe Halsmann's Jump Book, 1959). But perhaps his most memorable images were of Salvador Dalí: Dali Atomicus (1948), for example, in which the maestro is discovered in mid-air with water and hurtling cats (a shot that had to be repeated many times), and the slightly sinister Dali's Skull of Nudes (c.1950). Tender and understated, by comparison, was a twilit study of a nude pregnant woman sitting alone with a cat (c.1950).
— Robin Lenman
Bibliography
- Halsmann on the Creation of Photographic Ideas (1961)
