Quarto. Cloth in d-j. 26 x 33cm. 212pp. Fully-illustrated, after

Quarto. Cloth in d-j. 26 x 33cm. 212pp. Fully-illustrated, after black-and-white photographs, arranged alphabetically according to subject. Fine in fine jacket....Text below by Mary Panzer, Curator of Photographs National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution..............Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) was born in Riga, Latvia. He studied engineering in Dresden before moving to Paris, where he set up his photographic studio in 1932. Halsman's bold, spontaneous style won him many admirers. His portraits of actors and authors appeared on book jackets and in magazines; he worked with fashion (especially hat designs), and filled commissions for private clients. By 1936, Halsman was known as one of the best portrait photographers in France.....From the 1940s through the 1970s, Philippe Halsman's sparkling portraits of celebrities, intellectuals, and politicians appeared on the covers and pages of the big picture magazines, including Look, Esquire, the Saturday Evening Post, Paris Match, and especially Life. His work also appeared in advertisements and publicity for clients like Elizabeth Arden cosmetics, NBC, Simon & Schuster, and Ford. Photographers, amateur as well as professional, admired Halsman's stunning images. In 1958, a poll conducted by Popular Photography named Halsman one of the "World's Ten Greatest Photographers" along with Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Ernst Haas, Yousuf Karsh, Gjon Mili, and Eugene Smith. Altogether, Halsman's images form a vivid picture of prosperous American society in the middle years of the twentieth century. "Philippe Halsman: A Retrospective" is the first historical survey of his work.......Halsman's career came to a dramatic halt in the summer of 1940, when Hitler's troops invaded Paris. Albert EinsteinHis wife, daughter, sister, and brother-in-law, who all held French passports, immigrated to America, but as a Latvian citizen, Philippe Halsman could not obtain a visa. For several long months he waited in Marseilles along with many others who were forced to escape fascist Europe. Finally, through the intervention of Albert Einstein (who had met Halsman's sister in the 1920s), Halsman obtained permission to enter the United States, and he arrived in New York in November 1940 with little more than his camera.........Halsman's big break came when he met Connie Ford, a striking young model who agreed to pose in exchange for prints for her portfolio. Constance Ford When publicists at Elizabeth Arden saw Halsman's photograph of Ford against an American flag, they used the image to launch a national campaign for "Victory Red" lipstick. A year later, in the fall of 1942, Life asked Halsman to shoot a story on new hat design. To Halsman's delight, his portrait of the model smiling through a feathery brim landed on the cover. One hundred more covers followed before the magazine ceased weekly publication in 1972........When Halsman began working for Life, the magazine was only six years old, and photojournalism was still a new field. Before the existence of Life and its competitors, Americans learned about the world from newspapers, radio, and newsreels. But the new picture magazines published pages filled with bright, dramatic photographs, bringing Americans vivid information that no other media could match. Frank SinatraIn the spirit of a variety show, or a world's fair, magazines combined stories about international politics, everyday life, news events, celebrities, exotic scenery, and humor to prove that "so much of the world, so judiciously selected, had never been seen before in one place." Today, to understand the significance of those great magazines, we need only look at the many forms of mass media that have come to replace them. Now, we find photographs on television and billboards; in special publications devoted to news, people, fashion, or sports; in newspapers; in museums and galleries; and on the...