Jump

Joanne Woodward by Philippe Halsman

"When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears." Philippe Halsman

Photographer Philippe Halsman's Jump Book was published in 1959. The book is a collection of 178 of his photographs of comedians, actors and politicians captured gleefully in midair.

Halsman was born in Austria and immigrated to the United States of America as a young man. When he was 22, while hiking with his father in the Austrian Alps, his father died from severe head injuries, the circumstances of which were never clarified. Philippe was sentenced to prison for patricide. With the support of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein, his 10 year sentence was reduced to four years provided he never return to Austria. In America, he grew famous for his celebrity portraits, which often appeared on the covers of Life and Time magazines. Jump! a new film by Joshua Sinclair, about Halsman's life, is currently in theaters.