Old is Gold Philippe Halsman (1948) by Dalí Atomicus Dali Atomicus, perhaps the most iconic image that emerged from the collaboration of the eminent photographers, Philippe Halsman and artist Salvador Dalí. It legitimately took them 28 tries to pull off the jolly weightlessness of the photograph. However, the portrait of the artist inspired by his painting, Leda Atomica (1949), which appears in the composition’s right-hand corner—hanging suspended above the ground like the easel, chair, stepstool, cats, water, and Dalí himself, is the most eye-catching part of the entire masterpiece. Before the photographer duo could settle with the idea of tossing three cats up in the air, the Spanish artist suggested that they blow up a duck using dynamite, instead. “A true photographer wants to try to capture the real essence of a human being,” Halsman once famously said. However, capturing the essence of Dalí was a complex task. Over nearly four decades, Halsman photographed the artist on many occasions, spurring the most iconic black-andwhite portraits of the Surrealist. Dali Atomicus was an early example of the practice of a type of art that Halsman called “jumpology”. To capture the true spirit of his subjects—primarily celebrities and public figures who were accustomed to having a lens trained on them—he began asking them to make a jump after each photo session. “When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears,” he once explained. However, years before he convinced Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Richard Nixon, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to each take a leap of faith, he staged the outlandish shoot of Dalí. The artist appears suspended in the air amid three flying cats, a stream of water, and floating furniture. The original version of the photo reveals the “behind the scenes”: An assistant held up the chair on the left side of the frame, wires suspended the easel and the painting, and the footstool was propped up off the floor. However, there was no hidden trick to the flying cats or the stream of water. For each take, Halsman’s assistants—including his wife, Yvonne, and one of his daughters, Irene—tossed the cats and the contents of a full bucket across the frame. After
"Philippe Halsman, Astonish Me!" at Musée de l'Elysée, 2014
each attempt, Halsman developed and printed the film while Irene herded and dried off the cats. The rejected photographs had notes such as “Water splashes Dalí instead of the cat” and “Secretary gets into the picture.” When Halsman was finally satisfied with the composition, Dalí added a finishing touch to the printed photograph: the swirls of paint that appear on the easel. The final image was published in Life magazine. “Dalí never really wanted to photograph; Philippe never really wanted to pick up a paintbrush,” she said. “But together, they collaborated and made the most outrageous pictures”, iterated Irene Halsman, daughter of Philippe Halsman.
Nivedita Basu Nivedita Basu, I’m a 20-year-old girl, pursuing Computer Science Engineering. From a very early age, I had a knack in writing. One thing and the other kept pushing me forward and today I am being able to cherish my passion as a content writer.
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