Dali Atomicus by Philippe Halsman

Philippe Halsman (Latvian: Filips Halsmans; 2 May 1906 Riga, Latvia - 25 June 1979 New York City) was a Latvian-born American portrait photographer.
In September 1928, Halsman went on a hiking tour in the Austrian Alps with his father, Morduch. During this tour, Morduch died from severe head injuries. The circumstances were never completely clarified and Halsman was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment for patricide. The case provoked anti-Jewish propaganda and thus gained international publicity, and Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann wrote in support of Halsman. Halsman was finally released in 1931, under the condition that he leave Austria for good, never to return.

Halsman consequently left Austria for France. He began contributing to fashion magazines such as Vogue and soon gained a reputation as one of the best portrait photographers in France, renowned for his sharp, dark images that shunned the old soft focus look. When France was invaded, Halsman fled to Marseille and he eventually managed to obtain a U.S. visa, aided by family friend Albert Einstein (whom he later famously photographed in 1947).

In 1941 Halsman met the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and they began to collaborate in the late 1940s. The 1948 work Dali Atomicus explores the idea of suspension, depicting three cats flying, a bucket of thrown water, and Salvador Dalí in mid air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí's work Leda Atomica which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats. Halsman reported that it took 28 attempts to be satisfied with the result. Halsman and Dali eventually released a compendium of their collaborations in the 1954 book Dali's Mustache, which features 36 different views of the artist's distinctive mustache.

You could do this easily in Photoshop today, but Philippe Halsman did not - this was shot live. It took 28 tries to get it over six hours. Halsman's wife, Yvonne, held the chair, on the count of three, his assistants threw three cats and a bucket of water into the air; and on the count of four, Dali jumped and Halsman snapped the picture. It was that simple.

Other celebrities photographed by Halsman include Alfred Hitchcock, Albert Einstein, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Groucho Marx, Bob Hope, Judy Garland, Ford family, The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Richard Nixon, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge and Pablo Picasso. Many of those photographs appeared on the cover of Life.

To learn more about Dali, go here.
And to learn more about Philippe Halsman, go here.