Dali Planet #109: Might as well jump!
Life magazine was based in a building at 19 West 31st Street in Man- hattan before its move to Rockefeller Plaza, and among its fabled photographers was Philippe Halsman (1906-79), who had a 30-year collaboration with Dali. The most famous image that emerged from their friendship was 1948’s “Dali Atomicus”, seen above, which was given a two-page spread in the magazine.
Halsman and Dali took their cue from Harold Edgerton’s “Coronet” photo of a milk droplet frozen in time and wondered if they might get away with blowing up a chicken for a split-second exposure. They settled on tossing three cats around instead. Halsman suspended an easel, stool and two paintings by Dali (one being his new “Leda Atomica”) from the ceiling while his wife held up a chair. On the count of three, assistants threw the cats and a bucket of water into the air, and on the count of four Dali jumped and Halsman snapped the picture. Six hours and 28 attempts later, Halsman was satisfied. “My assistants and I were wet, dirty and near complete exhaustion,” he wrote. “Only the cats still looked like new.”
The following year Dali was back in Halsman’s studio kicking his legs for “Pop-corn Nude”, below left, a maelstrom of flying components, including piles of popcorn and baked goods and a naked woman, and in 1951 he posed in top hat contemplating an image he himself had devised: a skull assembled from seven nude women.
Halsman, the Latvia-born lensman who was chased from his Paris studio by the Nazis and was granted an emergency US visa thanks to Albert Einstein, shot 101 covers for Life — more than anyone else — and produced iconic images of Einstein, Groucho Marx, JFK, Audrey Hepburn and Winston Churchill. He is best remembered for persuading his famous subjects to jump in the air for “one last shot”. Among those who went along with the fun were Marilyn Monroe, then-vice president Richard Nixon and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
The terrific “outtakes” below from the Halsman-Dali shoot were published in the autumn 1950 issue of Photography Workshop magazine and are online here.
