Philippe Halsman Biography
Philippe Halsman (Riga, May 2, 1906 – New York, May 25, 1979) was an American photographer. Born in Riga to a Jewish family, his father Morduch (Max) Halsman, was a dentist, and his mother Ita Grintuch, a high school principal. Halsman studied electrical engineering in Dresden. In September 1928, Halsman set out on a walking tour of the Austrian Alps with his father, Morduch, but his father died during the trip from serious head injuries, in circumstances that were never fully clarified, and Halsman was sentenced to 4 years in prison for parricide. The case was exploited by anti-Jewish propaganda and thus gained international notoriety, so much so that Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann wrote in support of Halsman. Halsman was released in 1931, on the condition of leaving Austria. Halsman moved to France, where he began contributing as a photographer to fashion magazines, such as Vogue, gaining a reputation for portraits and becoming known for his sharp, dark images, which eschewed the old "soft focus look". When France was invaded by the Nazis in May 1940, Halsman fled to Marseille. He then managed to obtain a visa to the United States with the help of Albert Einstein (whom he would later photograph in 1947). Attracted by surrealism, in 1941 he met Salvador Dalí, with whom he began a fruitful artistic relationship that lasted thirty years. In 1952 he portrayed John Fitzgerald Kennedy, producing two photo albums: one of the photographs appeared on the cover of the original edition of Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage, while another was used for the political campaign in the Senate.
