CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/17/2015

Philippe Halsman's Jump Book

Best known for his celebrity portraiture for mid-century magazines like Time, Vogue, Match and especially LIFE (for which he shot more than 100 covers) Philippe Halsman published his iconic Jump Book in 1956, gathering nearly 200 photographs of his esteemed "sitters" jumping in mid-air. From fellow-artists, designers and photographers like "Capt. Edward Steichen," featured here, to public intellectuals, writers, political figures, athletes and entertainers like Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard M. Nixon, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Aldous Huxley, Carol Channing, Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Gleason, Halsman undertook the study of "jumpology" in order to capture his subjects in sudden bursts of energy, overcoming gravity. "He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles," Halsman explains in his Introduction. "The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One has only to snap it with the camera." Now out in a gorgeous new facsimile edition from Damiani.