The fascinating, inspirational artist and probably the first of their kind fashion images of Hollywood icons like Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Shirley Temple, Vivien Leigh, Ava Gardner to Alfred Hitchcock, Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn to the famous artists of New York City like Andy Warhol, Woody Allen, Albert Einstein (who also happened to be one of his close friends who helped him to escape Nazi Germany) & President Nixon, all emerged from the cameras of Philippe Halson, the Latvian born American fashion photographer.
His iconic work though, if we must pick two, are his artwork of the surrealist painter Salvador Dali, and his portraits of Marilyn Monroe. In my mind, Philippe Halsman could be the first fashion photographer who moved away from the soft-focus approach to stark, contrasty images that captured the vitality of the models through vigorous motion, something that, quite later, Richard Avedon picked up & demonstrated extensively through his fashion photographs.
Every face I see seems to hide—and sometimes fleetingly to reveal—the mystery of another human being. Capturing this revelation became the goal and passion of my life.
Philippe Halsman
Philippe Halsman‘s two most famous pictures of Salvador Dali are the Dalí Atomicus (1948) and Voluptas Mors (1951), created as part of his collaborations with immigrant artists.
The other inspirational fashion photographer who brought a similar yet dramatic change to Hollywood fashion stage was Herb List. However, Philippe Halsman’s images are much more alive, much more invigorating and in those days definitely pushed the art of fashion photography from a lifeless, staged act to one that can be lived.
His studio work, most popular being those of “jumping” shots, are portraits of a different nature, a big leap from the traditional sterile portraits of his era, he engaged his subject, mostly the Hollywood icons, in conversations to evoke their emotions in unusual ways.
Philippe Halsman did not use crazy darkroom techniques. Instead he mocked up his studio and used numerous props assisted with studio lights to create his surreal images. Each image was sharp edge to edge.
Another famous series with with the French artist & playwright Jean Cocteau, depicting what goes inside an artist’s mind. Life Magazine later published this series, where Halsman created the pictures each having some reference to Cocteau’s own creations. Halsman employed two models, Leo Coleman and Enrica Soma, along with a conglomeration of random props such as a live boa constrictor, trained doves, and a plastic anatomical model of a man to encapture his vision of the artist.
The image showing Cocteau wearing a suit jacket backward, while he seemingly smokes, reads, and brandishes scissors all at the same time, with 6 arms. This photo is the epitome of surrealism: taking a seemingly ordinary scene and adding an element of bizarre surprise. It was titled simply, as most of the photos in the series were, as Jean Cocteau. The photos that Halsman took of Cocteau that day in his tiny studio solidified his reputation as a spirited photographer and member of the surrealist movement.
The Collector
While it is one thing to paint a surreal on canvas, it is a complete different story to recreate one in the studio for photography. It is much easier these days with powerful digital photo editing & manipulation software, but in the 1960’s everything had to be created in studio & the dark room. Halsman’s work inspired photographers to take their creativity to a whole new level.
A now-rare book published in 1961, Halsman on the Creation of Photographic Ideas, aimed to offer unpretentious, practical advice and inspiration for photographers in order to help develop creative approaches to their work, addressing a problem faced by photographers of all kinds.