Philippe Halsman at Howard Greenberg

Known for the 101 overspreads he produced for Life magazine--more than any other photographer--Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) is celebrated for his irreverent portraits of leaping luminaries of that kind as Salvador Dali, Richard Nixon and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, captured in midair. A year after arriving in fresh York from Paris in 1940 Halsman began a series of Surrealist-inspired throw outs with Dali that continued for more than 30 years. The result of studio and darkroom legerdemain, many of the vintage prints included in this exhibition had not previously been reproduc or exhibited. For the greatest in quantity part they were taken by dint of Halsman using a large-format, twin-lens introspective camera of his own design that facilitated quiet, rapid in all sensess and produced sharp, high-quality images.

The compound dreamlike nature of these predigital images momentarily belies the labor of their making. The earliest print included, Midsummer's Night Mare (ca. 1944) pictures a tuxedoed Dali, his hands upon a sheep, as host to a hallucinatory gathering in a nocturnal forest. There are sum of two units men in white dinner jackets, single leaping into the frame, the other seated upon a swing at a suspended dinner table, reaching for another sheep above. A woman in evening dres cast in a winding directions an explosion of bread into the view while another, barefooted, reaches to catch a falling loaf. The face of a wide-eyed child is visible behind the underwood and, just perceptible in the print's lower center a certain quantity of unknown hand has added sum of two units crouching figures with retouching paint, minute witnesses added to the scene

Having established the generous parameters of their relationship by means of such projects, Halsman and Dali essayed Dali Atomicus (1948) an image of unlikely flying facts including Dali at work upon a framed canvas. Momentarily in midair are three cats in a rush of thrown water; a floating easel, footstool and chair; and Leda Atomica, Dali's painting of his wife Gala. Three of 26 variants are included here, as well as the final produce a 15-by-19-inch print achieved after five hours of labor; all are testaments to the fortunately obsessive nature of the Halsman-Dali collaboration. The following year, after several arrangements, they produc Pop-corn undressed a manic portrait of Dali, individual foot kicking up an electric explosion of a jumping in a state of nature in a hail of popcorn and bakery goods

Its tonal consequences intensified by the manipulation of light and shadow in the printing proces Halsman's 25-by-19-inch In Voluptate Mors (1951) portrays Dali contemplating a cranium assembled from the carefully arranged bodies of seven denuded women. It is based upon Dali's charcoal-and-gouache drawing of the same control The logistics of its creation are well documented in seven production discharges by Halsman's wife, Yvonne, also exhibited here. Made possible by means of the Philippe Halsman Archive, this exhibition signified Halsman's contribution to the 2004 Dali centennial and serv as a reminder of in what manner contemporary photography got to where it is.

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