Philippe Halsman. Salvador Dali in the fetal position 1942.
Following Dali’s statements about his memories of his prenatal life, Halsman photographed the painter « like an embryo in an egg, » in the fetal position on white sheets. Halsman then retouched the negative to give the illusion of nudity and superimposed the resulting image with a photograph of an egg.
Philippe Halsman. Jean Cocteau, The final touch, New-York 1949
Philippe Halsman’s assignment was to capture on camera what goes on “inside a poet’s mind,” for a three-page photo essay commissioned by LIFE Magazine, coinciding with the US release of Cocteau’s movie The eagle with two heads. No stranger to the caprices of avant-garde artists – in 1941, Halsman began his famous 37-year-long collaboration and friendship with Salvador Dali – the photographer had assembled an idiosyncratic array of props for The Frivolous Prince (a moniker the writer gained in the Bohemian artistic circles he mixed in, and the title of a volume he published at twenty-two), including a live boa constrictor and a dozen trained doves. The dancer Leo Coleman was also part of the entourage, alongside a “girl with a classically beautiful face” and a “classically perfect body”: Enrica Soma, a 19-year-old model and prima ballerina who had appeared on the cover of LIFE herself in 1947, where she was spotted by the filmmaker John Huston. She became his fourth wife in 1950.
Philippe Halsman. Enrica Soma 1949
Philippe Halsman. Enrica Soma 1940s
Philippe Halsman. Toni Hollingsworth with a Dali painting in the background 1945
Philippe Halsman. Enchantress. Lilliput 1939
Philippe Halsman. Dali sculpture with light 1950
Philippe Halsman. Jean Cocteau 1948
Philippe Halsman. Leopard Skull (collaboration with Salvador Dali) 1951
Philippe Halsman. Enrica Soma 1947
DantéBéa 