Personal Background - Philippe Halsman was born in Riga, Latvia (1906). Where he grew up there were multiple museums, operas, and ballets, so he was able to experience art from the time he was young. When he went to museums, he was most interested in the portraits. When Halsman was fifteen years old he found an old camera in his attic, that is when he first began taking, and developing photographs. His first subject was his sister, and he developed those pictures in his bathroom with a ruby red light bulb. After that, he would take portraits of his friends and girlfriends. When he was in college he studied electrical engineering, which after some time became boring to him. His sister was married in Paris, and when he was there, the art had a big impact on him, so he decided to stay and continue his studies. And his urge to become a photographer grew stronger, when finally he began to try new styles of photography, and experiment with his photographs.
Style - Halsman mostly takes portrait photographs, he is interested with human emotion, and he said that taking pictures of others faces reveals mysteries about that person. Many of the portraits are taken against a blank walls, to put emphasis on the person, and the emotion that the photo is being taken of. Another thing that Halsman is well known for are photographs of people jumping, because people can control their facial expressions, but they can’t control their jumps, it was something he was very curious about, and it stuck.
Philosophy - Halsman would mostly photograph his friends, and he tried to portray their faces. He says that each face hides or reveals the mystery of another human being. Capturing people’s faces and emotions became his goal in life. While he was in Paris, he looked at photographs that were fashionable at the time, and he disliked them. He wanted to fight that trend by showing that photography could be more realistic, strong, simple, and very sharp.
Influences - Halsman is most well known for his portraits and pictures of people. He also took pictures of people doing something positive, or expressing a positive emotion. I tried to recreate some of his photos. I really liked his jump photos, so I tried to take people using the same style. Since my brother is a basketball player I attempted to take photos of him playing basketball, and catch him while he was jumping. He also has a collection of photos called “Dali”. These photographs were interesting to me because they were strange, and some of them I found funny, so I wanted to try and recreate them.