Many pro portrait photographers end a shoot by asking their subjects to jump into the air as a way to catch them at their "loosest." Latvian-American photographer Philippe Halsman, who shot more than 100 Life magazine photos, pioneered the technique in the 1950s. The new issue of Smithsonian honors Halsman's jumptastic images. (Seen here, Richard M. Nixon.) From the article:
In 1950, NBC television commissioned him to photograph its lineup of comedians, including Milton Berle, Red Skelton, Groucho Marx and a fast-rising duo named Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Halsman noticed that some of the comedians jumped spontaneously while staying in character, and it was unlikely that any of them jumped with more antic enthusiasm than Martin, a crooner and straight man, and Lewis, who gave countless 10-year-old boys a class clown they could look up to.It may seem like a stretch to go from seeing funnymen jumping for joy to persuading, say, a Republican Quaker vice president to take the leap, but Halsman was always on a mission. ("One of our deepest urges is to find out what the other person is like," he wrote.) And like the true photojournalist he was, Halsman saw a jumpological truth in his near-perfect composition of Martin and Lewis.
