Philippe Halsman “Astonish Me!”

Event Description

“In my serious work, I am striving for the essence of things…and a childish streak leads me into all kinds of frivolous endeavour.” Philippe Halsman, a Riga-born adopted New Yorker via Paris, worked with many celebrities — Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Duke Ellington, Winston Churchill, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Richard Nixon and Albert Einstein to name but a few. He produced 101 covers for Life magazine and enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with Salvador Dalí that lasted some 30 years.

For the first time an exhibition looks at the American photographer’s entire career, from his beginnings in Paris in the 1930s to the tremendous success of his New York studio between 1940 and 1970. This retrospective presents no less than 300 exclusive images and original documents, which shed new light on the work of an exceptional and atypical photographer.

Image: “Planted like two sentinels, my moustache guards the entrance to my person”, Dalí’s Mustache
1953-1954, Philippe Halsman
Credit: Archives Philippe Halsman © 2015 Philippe Halsman Archive / Magnum Photos. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2015