Jumping for camera
Photographer Philippe Halsman believed that when a person was asked to jump, his mask fell and the real person emerged, writes Giridhar Khasnis
Sixty years ago, the Ford Motor Company, celebrating its 50th anniversary, commissioned American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894 – 1978) to work on a series of paintings dealing with Henry Ford, the early days of the company and selected members of the Ford family; some of the paintings were to appear in a 1953 calendar of the company.
For the same occasion, Latvian-born American portraitist Philippe Halsman (1906 – 1979) was commissioned to photograph the Ford family. It was not an easy task to click those official family pictures that involved a long, tiring session with nine tense adults and 11 mischievous children.
After a hard day’s work, Halsman was relaxing with a drink when all of a sudden and without any provocation, he asked Mrs Edsel Ford to jump for his camera. Surprised but not shaken, she turned out to be game. “With my high heels?” she asked before making the jump. Before long, her daughter-in-law, Mrs Henry Ford II, had joined the party.
That was the beginning. The 46-year-old lensman went on to photograph some of the best known figures in social, political and creative fields as studies in — what he called — ‘jumpology’. In the ensuing six years or so, he had film stars, politicians, business persons, artists, writers and even scientists literally jumping for his camera.
The long list of celebrities who became part of Halsman’s jumpology included sex symbols Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, and Diana Dors; actors Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Janet Leigh, and Grace Kelly; ballerina Tamara Toumanova; America’s celebrated male dancer Edward Villella; French poet Jean Cocteau; father of atomic bomb Robert J Oppenheimer; artists Salvador Dali and Marc Chagall; and author of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.
It is said that Halsman’s playful, pleasant and subtly persuasive personality made his sitters disregard their power or position, and do what he asked them to. He was quite athletic himself, and a good leaper who could surprise people by doing impromptu back flips. Added to this was his wonderful sense of humour.
“When Halsman said, ‘Jump’, no one asked how high,” recalled art critic Roberta Smith (The Joys of Jumpology / New York Times, May 23, 2010). “People simply pushed off or leapt up to the extent that physical ability and personal decorum allowed. In that airborne instant, Mr Halsman clicked the shutter.”
Floating and flying
There were many special pictures which came through Halsman’s jumpology. If the picture of Marilyn Monroe and Halsman himself — holding hand with each other — stood out, nothing could be as mesmerising as the magical motions of dancers Edward Villella and Tamara Toumanova.
Halsman’s jumping pictures were not limited to celebrity men and women; it extended to animals as well! The photograph of a cute little Chimp J Fred Muggs (1953) with one hand held high is sure to bring a smile to every viewer. The chimp which was just one-year-old when the picture was taken went on to become a superstar on American television.
Most of Halsman jump pictures are in black and white. Many of the jumpers seem to be floating and even flying in thin air. Smiling or laughing, they have shed their inhibitions and are clearly enjoying their freedom while immersing themselves in the essence of that moment.
As Smith points out, there is a sublime silliness to Halsman’s images that made one laugh or at least smile, regardless of how often one saw them. “They may offer incontrovertible proof of Schiller’s claim that ‘all art is dedicated to joy.’ Evidently, the simple act of getting off the ground requires giving in to something like joy. You have to let go.”
On his part, Halsman explained that when a person was asked to jump, his/her attention was mostly directed toward the act of jumping; and nothing else mattered. He also confessed that approaching someone for a jump picture was not as simple as it might have appeared. “I assure you that often, before approaching the person, my heart would beat, and I would have to fight down all my inhibitions in order to address this request to my subject. At every time when the subject agreed to jump, it was for me like a kind of victory.”
Jump book
The result of his efforts came out in 1959 as Philippe Halsman’s Jump Book, a collection of 178 photographs of political figures, leaders of industry, famous scientists, artists and writers, Nobel Prize winners, judges, theologians, movie stars, TV performers and outstanding athletes.
“I did not select these subjects,” wrote Halsman in the introduction to the book. “They were the people I was commissioned to photograph in the last few years. I must, therefore, apologise to the many illustrious and deserving men and women who were not given the opportunity to jump. In no way does it mean that they were not worthy of joining the exclusive roster of famous jumpers. It only means that by some bad fortune their names were not lately in my appointment book.”
Halsman believed that right from the earliest child education, one was taught how to dissimulate one’s thoughts; how to be polite with people one disliked; and how to control one’s emotions. “The result of this is: when we look at somebody’s face, we don’t know what he thinks or feels. We don’t even know what he is like. Everybody wears an armor. Everybody hides behind a mask.”
Calling jump a new psychological tool, and ‘jumpology’, a new branch of science, Halsman went on to explain how in a jump the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcame gravity. “He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One has only to snap it with the camera. While the previous psychological methods (to unravel the real self of a person) were lengthy and costly, the jump is rapid and economical.”
Today, there are many photographers around the world who practice ‘jumpology’. There are also websites dedicated exclusively to feature ‘jumping in the air’ pictures.
Incidentally, Halsman who was trained as an electrical engineer, knew six languages, never touched alcohol, and had 101 Life covers to his credit by the time he died in 1979.