Philippe Halsman

Halsman on the Creation of Photographic Ideas

The Frenchman

Making faces: a highly original visual Q&A with France's most beloved comic actor In New York in 1948, photographer Philippe Halsman had a chance meeting with Fernandel, a French movie star from the vaudeville tradition, and asked the actor to participate in a completely original photographic experiment. Halsman would ask Fernandel questions about America to which he would respond using only facial expressions. With his wide, lovable horse-face, Fernandel mimicked the answers to such questions as "Does the average Frenchman still pinch pretty girls in a crowd?" (silly grin) and "What was your reaction to the great American game of baseball?" (perplexed). Fernandel`s reactions are laugh-out-loud funny, and the book that resulted from this unusual collaboration is nothing short of wonderful. The Frenchman has been out of print for over fifty years, but TASCHEN`s reprint thankfully brings it back to life.

Neverland Lost

Prior to Michael Jackson's death, Henry Leutwyler photographed crates of artifacts removed from Jackson's Neverland ranch in California. The resulting series of photographs document the inner turmoil of the public person who chose to model his private life on Peter Pan and the Lost Boys - children who never wanted to grow up. Leutwyler's unemotional portraits are almost too intimate to behold, but when one digs beneath the surface, what emerges is the profound truth of a star's sequestered reality. Leutwyler's photographs unearth the "Lost Boy" forced to leave Neverland, and now these still lifes are as close as anyone will ever get to what Jackson once had, and ultimately left behind.