Philippe Halsman

In September 1928, 22-year-old Halsman was accused of his father's murder while they were on a hiking trip in the Austrian Tyrol, an area rife with antisemitism.

His family, friends and barristers worked for his release, getting support from Thomas Mann and various important European Jewish intellectuals including Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Jakob Wassermann, Erich Fromm, Paul Painlevé, Heinrich Eduard Jacob and Rudolf Olden, who endorsed his innocence.

He eventually managed to obtain a U.S. visa, aided by family friend Albert Einstein[3] (whom he later famously photographed in 1947).

Halsman had his first success in America when the cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden used his image of model Constance Ford against the American flag in an advertising campaign for "Victory Red" lipstick.

Another famous collaboration between the two was In Voluptas Mors, a surrealistic portrait of Dalí beside a tableau vivant of seven nude women posed to look like a large skull.

In 1951 Halsman was commissioned by NBC to photograph various popular comedians of the time including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Groucho Marx, and Bob Hope.

[10] He published Philippe Halsman's Jump Book in 1959, which contained a tongue-in-cheek discussion of jumpology and 178 photographs of celebrity jumpers.

For example, the photograph of a little boy holding a hand grenade by Diane Arbus contains what Halsman would call an added unusual feature.

Other celebrities photographed by Halsman include Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut during their 1962 interview, Martin and Lewis, Judy Garland, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau.