From 29 January to 11 May, Musée de l’Elysée will exhibit photographer Philippe Halsman‘s collection of extraordinary work, starting with first beginnings in 1930s Paris to his breakthrough phase in New York between 1940 and 1970. Within nine years Halsman became one of the most famous portrait photographers in Paris and once he got to the US after escaping the Nazis, he photographed some of the most important people of the 20th century — Albert Einstein, Richard Nixon, Marilyn Monroe, Salvador Dalí…
Although he was commissioned for such high profile work, he never gave up on his own creativity. His passion for the avant-garde comes to the fore, maybe most profoundly, when he collaborated with surrealist painter Dalí. There’s a picture where Dalí has his head under water and releases milk from his mouth, at just the right moment, to make it look like an atomic explosion. Or, famously, Philippe devoted an entire book to Dalí’s moustache. Divided into four parts — Halsman/Dalí, Paris in the 1930s, Portraits and Mises en Scène — Astonish Me! will feature many exclusive unseen elements of the photographer’s work such as contact sheets, annotated contact prints, preliminary proofs, original photomontages and mock-ups. Here’s a little glimpse of what to expect:
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