Philippe Halsman treated a portrait as a problem to be solved. Before a sitting he worked out what the picture should say, then built the conditions to make it happen: thrown water and flying cats for Salvador Dalí, a sudden leap for a politician or film star, a sharp, close crop for a writer. The results look spontaneous, but they were planned like advertising layouts. That makes his work a useful study for anyone who art-directs photography, designs covers or builds a visual concept for a campaign.
Halsman’s photographs are in copyright. The Cleveland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art hold prints by him, but their records mark them as copyrighted or not public domain, and no Halsman work is flagged public domain in the Art Institute of Chicago, Met or Cleveland open-access collections. This guide therefore describes his pictures in text only. For images cleared for reuse, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Philippe Halsman?
Halsman was born in Riga on 2 May 1906, when the city was part of the Russian Empire, and died in New York on 25 June 1979; the Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue records give his dates as 1906–1979. He studied engineering in Dresden before turning to photography.
In the 1930s he ran a portrait studio in the Montparnasse district of Paris, on the rue Delambre, and photographed writers and artists including André Gide, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier and André Malraux. After the German invasion of France in 1940 he left for the United States, with help from Albert Einstein in obtaining a visa, as his published chronologies record.
In New York he became one of the regular photographers of Life magazine; his biographies credit him with 101 Life covers. In 1945 he was elected the first president of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP), and Magnum Photos’ profile dates his invitation to join the agency as a contributing member to 1951. In 1998 the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery organised a retrospective that later toured.
Key works by Philippe Halsman
Portrait of Albert Einstein (1947). A close, soft-lit head-and-shoulders portrait of Einstein looking directly at the camera with a sorrowful expression. The image was later used on a United States postage stamp in 1966 and on the cover of Time in 1999.
Dalí Atomicus (1948). Halsman met Dalí in 1941 and began a long collaboration with him. In this photograph Dalí leaps in mid-air beside an easel, a chair and a stream of water, while three cats fly across the frame. Halsman wrote that it took 28 attempts to get a frame in which everything aligned, while some later accounts count 26, and the final version was published in Life. The easel and Dalí’s painting Leda Atomica hung on wires, visible in the unretouched print, and the image on the easel was painted onto the print afterwards.
Marilyn Monroe for Life (1952). Halsman photographed Monroe in 1952, and a portrait from that work appeared on a Life cover. The Cleveland Museum of Art holds several 1952 gelatin silver prints of Monroe by him, which are catalogued as copyrighted.
Dali’s Mustache (1954). A small book made with Dalí, built around dozens of variations on the painter’s upturned moustache. It is a lesson in how far one motif can be pushed.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1958). A portrait print in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s collection, dated 1958, shows the range of his editorial work beyond celebrities and artists.
Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book (1959). A book of portraits of well-known people photographed in mid-jump, with a light-hearted text on what he called “jumpology”. The jump series grew out of a 1951 NBC commission to photograph television comedians, several of whom jumped during their sittings.
What to look at in a Halsman photograph
One idea per frame. Every well-known Halsman picture can be described in a sentence: Dalí suspended in air, Einstein looking at you, a famous person jumping. Before you look at light or crop, look at how simple the concept is. That clarity is what made the pictures work on magazine covers.
Tight, sharp crops. His studio portraits often fill the frame with the head and shoulders, in crisp focus. The face becomes a graphic shape, and the background disappears. On a cover, that leaves clean space for a masthead and headlines.
Controlled light. In the Einstein portrait soft light models the face against a plain, dark background. In the jump pictures the light is brighter and more even, so a figure in motion stays sharp and readable.
Suspension and timing. Dalí Atomicus and the jump portraits both freeze bodies in mid-air. The diagonal lines of arms, legs, water and cats create energy across the rectangle. Notice how nothing touches the ground and how the eye keeps moving.
Staging that looks natural. Halsman’s argument, set out in the Jump Book, was that a person concentrating on the jump stops controlling their face, so their expression becomes more open. He used a theatrical method to get a candid result.
Technique: planned images and the twin-lens camera
Halsman was trained as an engineer, and the habit shows. His chronologies describe how he designed his own twin-lens reflex camera in Paris so that he could frame and shoot without losing the moment, and later an improved large-format 4×5 version, known as the Halsman-Fairchild, which he kept using for portraits.
He also wrote down his method. In Halsman on the Creation of Photographic Ideas (1961) he set out six rules for producing unusual pictures, including the direct approach, the unusual technique, the added unusual feature and the missing feature. Read together, they are a brief for concept-led image making: decide the idea, then choose the device that makes it surprising.
Finally, his work was made for print. Covers and magazine spreads needed pictures that read at a glance, worked with type and survived reproduction, and Halsman composed with that in mind. For other portraitists who shaped the magazine portrait, compare our guides to Yousuf Karsh and to his long-time collaborator Salvador Dalí. For a later portraitist who also used movement and plain backgrounds to strip a sitter down to gesture, see our guide to Richard Avedon.
How designers can borrow Halsman’s ideas
- Write the image as a sentence first. Before a shoot or an illustration, write one line that describes the picture. If you cannot, the concept is not ready.
- Use his rules as a checklist. For each concept, ask what an unusual technique, an added feature or a missing feature would do. It is a quick way to move past the obvious version.
- Crop for the cover. Frame portraits tightly, keep the background simple and leave room for type. Our notes on poster design principles cover the hierarchy that makes a single image and headline work together.
- Use movement to loosen people up. For team photos and brand portraits, give subjects an action, such as a jump, a turn or a gesture, and shoot the moment of release.
- Stage, then retouch with honesty. Halsman used wires and assistants and then cleaned up the print. Plan practical effects on set, and keep a record of what was added afterwards.
- Push one motif. Like Dali’s Mustache, take a single element of a brand, such as a logo shape or a product, and make a series of variations on it.
- Design your tools. If a workflow keeps costing you the moment, change the tool. Halsman adapted his camera; you can adapt templates, presets and shot lists.
Frequently asked questions
What is Philippe Halsman known for?
His portraits for Life magazine, his collaborations with Salvador Dalí including Dalí Atomicus (1948), his 1947 portrait of Albert Einstein and the jump portraits gathered in his 1959 Jump Book.
How was Dalí Atomicus made?
Assistants threw cats and water across the set on a count while Dalí jumped, and props were held up on wires or by hand. Halsman wrote that it took 28 attempts before one frame worked; some accounts count 26.
What is jumpology?
Halsman’s tongue-in-cheek name for his practice of asking sitters to jump, on the idea that a person focused on jumping drops their guard, revealing a more natural expression.
Can I use Philippe Halsman’s photographs in my designs?
No. His photographs are in copyright and are not public domain in the US. Study the ideas and composition, and create your own images.
