Philippe Halsman signed 101 LIFE covers, more than any other photographer; he created portraits extraordinary for their strength and psychological excavation; he managed to make crowned heads, scientists, heads of state and screen stars jump in front of his lens; with Salvador Dalí he invented images as true artistic performances. He is Philippe Halsman, one of the greatest portraitists in the history of photography, always able to work between gaze and introspection, immediate intuition, flashes of genius and refined technique. This first Italian retrospective celebrates his work with a series of extraordinary images, created with irony and profound lightness.
Who is Philippe Halsman
Born in Riga, Latvia in 1906, Halsman began his career as a photographer in Paris in the XNUMXs, working for magazines such as Vogue and Vu. In the XNUMXs, at the height of the war and thanks to the friendship of Albert Einstein, he managed to obtain a visa for the United States and, once he landed in New York, his fame as a great portraitist was consolidated even further. From collaborations with major publications to intense portraits for Hollywood show business, Halsman has created a unique and revolutionary genre and style.
His photographs are the result of a volcanic creativity and the synergies that arise when meeting great and illustrious friends. Like Salvador Dalì, with whom he created a series of portraits in which the artist and the photographer magically merge, creating an extraordinary series of images. They all lend themselves to Halsman's "game", to the sweet torture of being photographed in a studio, with lights, backdrop and cumbersome machinery. Halsman also invents a method to amuse and surprise his subjects: he makes them jump in front of the camera.
“Jumpology”, a game with which he managed to make people jump from Marilyn Monroe to the Dukes of Windsor, inaugurating a whole new way of photography
On display at the Museum of Rome in Trastevere 100 images of various formats, coming from the Halsman Archive in New York, ranging between color and black and white, they retrace his entire career. A unique opportunity to come into contact with his great creations, understand what the creative key of his images is: halfway between document and invention, as is precisely in the tradition of great portraitists who are asked to interpret the subject by making it emerge, or hide, behind his character too
at the cost of inventing a particular, very personal form of photographic document. Photo after photo, in the exhibition we enter Halsman's universe, in a visual game between the photographer, the personality to be photographed and the viewer. As Halsman said, “The final result is another surface to penetrate, this time thanks to the sensitivity of the viewer. In fact, it is up to him to decipher the elusive equation between the sheet of photographic paper and the depth of the human being”. Through the photographer's images, we reconstruct the faces of twentieth-century culture and entertainment.
The exhibition, curated by Alessandra Mauro, is promoted by Roma Capitale, Department of Culture, Capitoline Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and is organized by Contrasto and Zètema Progetto Cultura, in collaboration with BNL BNP Paribas and Leica Camera Italia. The catalog is published by Contrasto.
