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1. Philippe Halsman
Portrait Photographer
Philippe Halsman was a famous portrait photographer who was born in 1906 and
started taking professional photos in 1934 and moved to America in 1940 he became
very successful and photographed many of the world most influential people of that
time these include Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe and Clint Eastwood. He got to work
with the expressionist artist Salvador Dali and did many projects with him.
This is a picture of Marilyn Monroe who in in the photo is levitating and in many of
Philippe’s photos he took pictures of people jumping to make it look like they are
levitating. In the photo we can see that the models hair and dress has started to float in
the air making her look suspended. These photos are created when the camera is set to
a fast shutter speed and the model jumps and t a photo is taken when they are up in the
air in the time when these were taken this should have been very surreal and the
expression on her face adds to the surreal nature of the picture.

2. This is a picture from the collaboration between Philippe Halsman and Salvador Dali the
picture is of Dali in front of a skull that is comprised of 7 female models. This photo took
4 hours to get right. The photo is a surreal look on Dali’s look on war as at the time
World War 2 was still going and would do for another 4 years. There was lots of
propaganda at the time calling many woman bags of germs and diseases. Dali had done
a lot of sketches on the topic. Philippe had used lighting on this photo to show the skull
in darkness while Dali was in the light and can be seen in full and from the techniques
used at the time we know that this lighting effect must have been done in the darkroom
while developing the photos.
This is a portrait of Albert Einstein this is a very simple portrait photo with the subject
well framed in the rule of thirds but we can see that the lighting and background make
the subject pop, as in he is very clearly seen and very well recognised in black and white
we can clearly see all the ringles on his face and is imperfections but with the close up
framing of the photo it seems that this was intentional as Philippe wanted to make
Albert Einstein as human as possible. This has become one of the most famous photos of
recognisable photos of Albert Einstein.