Philippe Halsman described his friendship with Spanish painter Salvador Dalí as a thirty-year collaboration. Halsman tried to elicit spontaneous behavior from all his models, but the Surrealist painter required no such prompting. From their first session in 1941, they discovered a shared interest in the unconscious mind and the potential of photography to reveal its depths. Over the next thirty years Dalí proved a willing accomplice for numerous suitably surreal photographs.

Philippe Halsman (1906-1979)
Gelatin silver print, 1944
Published December 2000 (cover)
Halsman Archive
© Halsman Estate