Philippe Halsman's Jumpology and Surprising Portraits Celebrated in Retrospective

Philippe Halsman (1906–1979), a Latvian-born photographer who worked in Paris and New York, pioneered artistic photography in the 20th century with innovative techniques like jumpology, where subjects jumped to reveal unguarded expressions. His career spanned from the 1930s in Paris, where he fled after being wrongly convicted in Austria in 1928, to New York after 1940, producing over 500 images of Salvador Dalí, including the iconic Dalí Atomicus (1948). Halsman created 101 covers for LIFE magazine, featuring celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, whom he photographed jumping in 1952 and again in 1959 after 200 attempts. His 1959 book Philippe Halsman Jump Book compiled jumps of 170 famous figures, including Dean Martin, Grace Kelly, Jerry Lewis, Jacques Tati, and Richard Nixon. He also photographed dancers like Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, and his work appeared in Vogue, Vu, and Harper’s Bazaar. A major retrospective exhibition titled Sorpréndeme, produced by the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne with his family, featured over 500 pieces including unpublished material, photomontages, and contact sheets, marking the most comprehensive showcase of his work to date. Halsman's style combined technical precision, surrealist influences, and direct portraiture, capturing figures like Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, André Gide, André Malraux, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, and Alfred Hitchcock.