The legendary photographer Philippe Halsman who's made '101 covers for LIFE magazine' talks to Leonard Nimoy in 1973 about his work. What an inspiration!

Dali : derrière le crâne d’ “In Voluptate Mors”

photo : Philippe Halsman/Magnum Photos

 

 

Retour sur une photo légendaire : ce crâne sensuel et morbide, incarnée par 7 femmes et pensé par l’artiste Dali et le photographe Philippe Halsman.

Le Sexe et la Mort, duo classique qui a tant inspiré et qui inspire tant encore.

Au détour d’un tumblr, nous sommes retombés sur une oeuvre majeure du genre : “In Voluptate Mors” (ou In Voluptas Mors), collaboration en 1951 entre le célèbre artiste Dali et le photographe Philippe Halsman, 10 ans après leur rencontre et 3 ans après leur première collaboration, Atomicus.

Jouant sur une base de tableau vivant, ce portrait de l’artiste marque bien évidemment pour son crâne, formé par sept femmes, qu’Halsman a placées durant 3 heures, pour s’approcher du croquis original de Dali.

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In Photography, Cool Rules By JOHN LELAND

Philippe Halsman

The thing about “cool” is that it shows itself equally in moments of distress or pleasure, driving people indifferently to greatness or stupidity. It comes from gritty streets and prices out the people who live there; it pulls couples together or cleaves them apart. And even as its meaning dissipates from overuse, you still can’t talk about Miles Davis without mentioning it.

Cool is, in short, a story about America, full of contradictions and unresolved riddles, a mask that often reveals more than the face beneath it.

You won’t find it preserved under glass at the Smithsonian – except that, ahem, it is now on display at the museum’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, in a parade of images that say a lot about how the nation sees itself when it pretends everybody is looking. They are also pretty cool. (Or, as the art historian Robert Farris Thompson categorizes in his essay “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” it’s a “metaphor of moral aesthetic accomplishment.”)

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