Jeu de paume philippe halsman biography

Working closely with Philippe Halsman Archive, New York, the Magazine publishes an excerpt from Focus on Myself, a previously unpublished typescript by Philippe Halsman.

In this short autobiographical essay written in the late 1960s, Halsman tells the story of his photographic career. The last pages, reproduced here, are devoted to the portrait, his favorite genre and a constant source of reflection on the photographic medium.

Jeu de paume philippe halsman biography book

Halsman addresses the different stages in the making of a portrait, evoking the power of invention, the question of style but also some technical aspects, with the ultimate hope for the photographer that “his photographic interpretation of a great human being becomes the definitive image of this being.”

Version française

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It has been very important and beneficial for me that extraneous projects and magazine assignments continually interrupt my portrait work.

A photographer gets stale when his work becomes routine. Instead of discovering new p