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Discover the Genius of Philippe Halsman’s Surrealist Portraits

A retrospective opens in Paris

When he said “Jump!” they all did: Groucho Marx and Bob Hope, Marilyn Monroe and Richard Nixon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, and even the Ford matriarch, Mrs. Edsel Ford. And we all know his picture Dali Atomicus where a crazed-looking Salvador Dali is suspended in mid-air together with three lounging cats, a chair and a long, S-shaped stream of water. Halsman was persistent: the picture took 28 tries. “When you ask a person to jump,” he said “his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears.”

Born Jewish in Riga, Latvia, in 1906, Philippe Halsman studied engineering but he became hooked on photography when he discovered his father’s old camera and the magic of the darkroom at age fifteen. After a tragic episode—while they were mountain climbing in the Austrian Alps, his father fell to his death and, he was falsely accused of his murder by an anti-Semitic police force, spending two years in prison—Halsman moved to Paris in 1932 and set up a portrait studio. He collaborated with Vogue, Vu and Voilà and photographed artists and writers such as Chagall, Gide, Le Corbusier and Malraux in a sharp, crisp, minimalist style different from the Pictorialism then in style.

When Adolf Hitler’s troops invaded Paris in 1940, Halsman emigrated to New York and arrived with little more than his camera, a twin-lens reflex that he had designed himself. Unknown in America, his breakthrough came when he photographed a young model resting on the American flag: she became the face of Elizabeth Arden’s Victory Red lipstick. More than a hundred covers of LIFE magazine by Halsman followed, featuring portraits of celebrities, intellectuals and politicians. Fascinated by Surrealism since his stay in Paris, he loved creating photomontages, such as his portrait of Hitchcock with a bird on his cigar, or the series he created during his thirty-year collaboration with Salvador Dali, including one striking picture where the background is a skull made up of nude, intertwined female bodies.

LIFE Cover Portraits by Philippe Halsman

October 16, 1944 cover of LIFE magazine featuring Lauren Bacall. May 22, 1950, cover of Life magazine featuring the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. August 13, 1951, cover of Life magazine featuring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. September 3, 1951, cover of LIFE magazine featuring Gina Lollobrigida. December 17, 1951, cover of LIFE magazine featuring Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier. April 7, 1952, cover of LIFE magazine featuring Marilyn Monroe. November 2, 1953, cover of LIFE magazine featuring Winston Churchill. April 26, 1954, cover of LIFE magazine featuring Grace Kelly.

His dark youth seemed all but forgotten. Intense energy, optimism, and often humor shone through Halsman’s unconventional portraits. He prided himself on his ability to reveal his sitter’s character: “It must be accomplished,” he said, “by provoking the victim, amusing him with jokes, lulling him with silence, or asking impertinent questions which his best friend would be afraid to voice.” This approach is what makes Halsman’s portraits so contemporary, as if untouched by time.

Philippe Halsman’s retrospective Etonnez-moi ( Surprise Me) opens on Oct. 20 at the Musée du Jeu de Paume in Paris.

Carole Naggar is a photography historian and poet.

Expérimentation pour un portrait de femme 1931-1940 Dali Atomicus, 1948 Jean Cocteau, l'artiste multidisciplinaire, 1949. Philippe Halsman - Autoportrait, 1950 Ballet aquatique, 1953 Audrey Hepburn, 1955 Brigitte Bardot, 1955 Salvador Dalí, 1956 Philippe Halsman and Marilyn Monroe, 1959 Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren, 1962 Muhammad Ali, 1963

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