“In creative photography the photographer assembles and arranges the elements of his picture. He does not simply “take” it. He “makes” it. The photographer who takes the picture is the witness to the occurrence. The photographer who makes the picture is the creator of the occurrence.”
-PhilippeHalsman
The Story
One of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century, Halsman often said that a true portrait was when the mask of the subject dropped, and their inner soul was revealed. Halsman understood how masks can obscure the truth, because at 22 years old he was swept into the center of a scandalous trial, where fake news and prejudice was the cover story.
Halsman came to America at the age of 34. He became a legend and created them, but in order to succeed he needed to keep his traumatic experience hidden. He became known as LIFE Magazine’s cover king; the star maker, the man sent around the world to discover the most beautiful women, the photographer that would push creative boundaries and technical innovations. He introduced surrealistic concepts into pop culture, and captured celebrities jumping to reveal their authentic selves beneath their carefully crafted masks.
But decades before his photographs were on the covers of magazines around the world, the Halsman trial was front page news all across Europe. For two years he was considered by the public either as a murderer, or the victim of injustice. While hiking with his father in the Austrian alps, there was an accident, and a murder. It was 1928 and the two city Jews had unknowingly wandered into the heart of a deeply anti-Semitic landscape. The young Halsman was falsely accused by the locals of patricide, and immediately imprisoned. His 18 year old sister worked tirelessly raising awareness of the case and rallying support from people like Einstein and Freud. Through a series of miracles he was pardoned, and then moved to Paris in 1930, where the 24 year old reinvented himself as a photographer.
The camera was his salvation and a bridge back to re-engagement with the world. Some of his first subjects were the authors he read in prison like Andre Gide and Malraux. Halsman designed a new camera that could precisely catch fleeting moments and expressions which were impossible to record otherwise. Having survived the psychological trauma of the trials and prison, this young man had developed a deep understanding of the mind, and drew from his personal experience to disarm his subjects in order to catch their essence on film.
Halsman kept this dark chapter hidden for the rest of his life, but if you know how to look at his photographs you can see how it reverberates through his life’s work. For ten years he developed his skills and reputation in Paris, until 1940 when the Nazis came hunting for him. With the help of Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt he miraculously escaped, arriving on the docks of NYC as an unknown refugee with only a camera under his arm.
The exhilaration of the new city brought out Halsman’s instincts of survival and creativity. After much determination and some lucky breaks, his photos begin to appear on the covers of magazines and his subjects start to include personalities like Dali, Marilyn, Audrey, Grace, Hitch, Brando, Cocteau, Einstein, JFK, to name a few. As his career skyrockets, his dark past seems further and further away, but traces of his experience weave themselves subconsciously through his creative choices. Hidden in plain sight. Shutter open, lips sealed.
New York 2006. Halsman’s wife Yvonne passes away, and secrets hidden in the bottom of her closet are revealed. Prison journals uncovered, sealed books opened, a trunk of early photos start to fill in the pieces of the mystery of what happened 94 years ago. In 2019 his grandson Oliver begins to reconstruct the time line, and returns to the scene of the crime in Austria to discover the truth for himself, where more hidden secrets are uncovered.
Halsman used his freedom and power of creativity to overcome darkness not only by rewriting the story of his own life, but also by sparking wonder and inspiration for the generations that have followed.
DIRECTOR’S VISION
Personal connection to material and access
As the grandson and archivist of Halsman’s life work, I have access to and the rights to use all of our IP (iconic and unknown photographs, negatives, files, objects, etc.) My mother Irene and I started filming interviews 20 years ago when I was a teenager. Since 2019 I have been shooting additional interviews and extensively researching previously unknown parts of Halsman’s life. We also have 50 + hours of audio lectures and classes given by Halsman, and boxes of his essays, and correspondences with notable personalities. Halsman was on the Johnny Carson show, Omnibus, Person to Person, as well as other TV shows.
The Structural Framework for organizing Halsman’s life story
Magnum Opus is a term used to describe an artist’s Masterpiece, but originally was an Alchemical term relating to personal and spiritual transmutation. Alchemical experiments led to the discovery of photography, and the four stages of the Alchemical process (Nigredo, Albedo, Citrinitas, and Rubedo) find correlation with Halsman’s origin story and the evolution of his craft. Alchemical terms will be used to structurally break up the story into four main chapters, with the first phase Nigredo (relating to Halsman’s imprisonment) being told towards the end of the narrative arc. I want the audience to be able to reinterpret the photographs they have previously seen based on their new understanding of Halsman’s creative motivations, as a reaction to the traumatic chapter of his youth. Sub-chapters will be based on Halsman’s 1961 manifesto of rules and stimulations for creativity On The Creation of Photographic Ideas (Stimulation By Object, Stimulation by Knowledge, Rule of the Direct Approach, Rule of the Unusual Approach, Stimulation by Memory, Rule of the Missing Feature, Stimulation by the Photograph Itself, etc.). The film will end on a high note, with his legendary Jump series, looking at that body of work through the lens of freedom as it relates to specifics of the trial.
MOOD
The starting point for this film is to imagine what kind of movie my grandfather would have made about himself. I want to use his body of work as direct inspiration. He could be funny and playful, exploring surrealistic notions and magical realism. He could be dead serious and probe into the depths of the human experience. Always looking to innovate, his work embodies the pantheon of human emotion. This is a film that will have light moments, magical moments, and serious moments, with the aim that the viewer comes away transformed having seen a very unique film about a unique man who survived a nightmare and recreated his life in the most amazing way. His main creative thesis was the Psychological Portrait, and this film will be a psychological portrait of him, revealing his humanity when the mask falls.
STYLE
My grandfather used his skills as an engineer who was after precision and technology to make his images even more powerful. I have absorbed his wide ranging styles my whole life. They inform and inspire my own art practice, and serve as entry points to bring a modern approach to telling his story. Many of his technical innovations were based on playing with the materiality of his medium through collage and darkroom experimentation. They were practical and imaginative ways to create images that only existed in the realm of the mind. I see a lot of potential for the narration of the story by animating (in innovative ways) the wealth of his many photographs only I have access to. The film will be framed through a personal lens; with my mother and I as storytellers and narrators, using personal family objects and old photo equipment as jumping off points to tell different parts of the story. We have archival interviews from the 40s through the 90s, and new interviews will be shot with important subjects, as well as footage in Austria retracing the hike and revisiting the scene of the crime. We will create a work that reflects Halsman’s creative whimsy and daring, far from a typical talking heads documentary. My experience and understanding of digital art and Ai animation will allow me to recreate scenes of the past using deepfake and Ai technology, an area Halsman would be exploring if he were alive today.
A young immigrant in New York City transformed his personal trauma into a creative explosion that would inspire the popular imagination for the rest of the 20th century. The film is about the power of the mind and creativity, and how icons and iconic moments were forged. There is wide commercial appeal, and the audience for this film is extensive. Everyone today is a photographer with their mobile phone, and this film not just will trace the history of photography from its alchemical past, but also how images are disseminated and shape culture. Philippe Halsman’s work is known all over the world, and many of his varied subjects (Dali, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey, Hitchcock, etc.) have existing fan bases. Aside from celebrities, Halsman’s story also brings to life the history of 20th century, from pre-WWII Europe, to post-war American culture (from LIFE magazine to Hollywood). Through the life of one man there is so much to learn. Halsman was a consumate explorer of possibilities and a teacher of the results. This film will gather together his most powerful lessons and share them in a profound and joy-filled way.
Audience
This film is about how a young immigrant transformed his personal trauma into a creative explosion that would inspire the popular imagination.
It’s about the power of the mind and creativity, and how icons and iconic moments were forged.
From being hunted by Hitler, to being saved by Einstein, to putting Marilyn on her first LIFE cover, Halsman’s story is the story of 20th century (pre-WWII Europe to post-war American culture) both politically and creatively.
There is wide commercial appeal and audience for this film is extensive. Everyone today is a photographer with their mobile phone, and this film not just will trace the history of photography into its alchemical past, but also how images are disseminated and shape culture. With Ai and manufactured imagery beginning to take over our visual landscape, this story also explores one of the analogue pioneers of the Manipulated Image.
Halsman’s work is known all over the world, and many of his varied subjects (Dali, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey, Hitchcock, etc.) have existing fan bases. Aside from celebrities, Halsman’s story also brings to light the struggle of being targeted as a minority, and overcoming hatred, and finding success through celebrating life.
Through the life of one man there is so much to learn. Halsman was a consummate explorer of possibilities and a teacher of the results. This film will gather together his most powerful lessons and share them in a profound and joy-filled way.
DIRECTOR
Oliver Halsman Rosenberg is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, curator, designer, speaker, and technologist, as well as being the co-director and archivist of his grandfather’s estate. His work has been reviewed in the NY Times, and Parkett, and exhibited nationally and internationally. He has been weaving art and technology projects since 2003, and was writing about the risks of the post-reality metaverse in 2015. With one foot in the world of creativity and technology, and the other foot in the world of analog estate preservation, he enjoys finding solutions that honor the genius past by utilizing the exciting possibilities of the future.
-”My grandfather died when I was four years old, but his wife Yvonne, my grandmother, was my best friend growing up. She passed away in 2006, and our family needed to move out from the Halsman studio. I realized this move would only happen once in my life, and I put my career on hold for two years to focus on archiving his life’s work. My grandparent’s darkroom became my bedroom, and continued what I started as a child, which was to open every envelope and look at each of his photographs and contact sheets. I discovered a trunk of photos from France, and a crate of glass plates that have never been seen before. In my free time I designed/wrote/edited a book called Unknown Halsman which was a collection of decontextualized photos I discovered in the archival process (published by D.A.P. 2008). I spent the next seventeen years organizing museum exhibitions, writing catalogues, and traveling to places like India and Japan where I could live nomadically and develop my own art practice. After our most recent Halsman retrospective tour ended, my mother said it was time to pick up the film project we began filming in the 1990s when I was a teenager. To paraphrase my grandfather’s advice to young photographers: “It’s not about having the best equipment, rather it’s about the depth of experience the person has who is holding the camera, which makes them sensitive enough to capture transcendental moments.” I want to tell his story, not only because his talent deserves recognition, but because his spirit to survive and thrive after the experience of persecution in Europe is incredibly inspirational. My grandfather wanted to move on from that painful chapter of his youth and never speak of it, so as a result, his incredible journey, as well as what his teenage sister did in order to get him free have remained hidden from the public until now.”