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Philippe Halsman's Jump Book

by Philippe Halsman

Photographs: Philippe Halsman

Text: Philippe Halsman, Mike Wallace

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams

96 pages

Pictures: 194

Year: 1986

ISBN: 0-8109-2338-6

Price: 125 €

Comments: softcover, good condition, 22 x 28 cm.

Where other portraitists were content to have their subjects sit for them, Philippe Halsman had his jump. He was regarded as one of the world's greatest portrait photographers, and had to his credit 101 'Life' magazine covers. At the height of his career, he sought to extend his realm into unexplored territory. "In a jump", he wrote, "the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible." For six years, Halsman asked his illustrious sitters to jump for him, and most complied: Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, and Brigitte Bardot; Richard Nixon and Adlai Stevenson; Richard Rodgers; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; and countless from the arts, sciences, politics, business, and sport leapt at the chance. In 1959, Halsman's book made publishing history by introducing the brand new science of "jumpology". This unique and authoritative book has long been out of print, and so Abrams takes great pleasure in reissuing it, adding previously unpublished jumps, in recognition of this revolutionary breakthrough that united briefly the science of psychology and the art of photography.

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