Marilyn monroe paparazzi photos6/21/2023 ![]() ![]() He called his method jumpology. When you ask someone to jump, Halsman said, “the mask falls, so that the real person appears.” The idea of having people jump for the camera can seem like a gimmick, but it is telling that jumpology shares a few syllables with psychology. People simply pushed off or leapt up to the extent that physical ability and personal decorum allowed. When the photographer Philippe Halsman said, “Jump,” no one asked how high. Philippe Halsman’s iconic photo of Marilyn Monroe makes the cover of LIFE magazine, April 7, 1952. Using the euphemistic language of the time, Halsman’s assistant admired the photographer’s ability to make “suggestive” pictures of beautiful women which still showed “good taste,” emphasizing “expression” rather than “physical assets.” And then the assistant added, “Halsman is very adept at provoking the expression he wants.” via Yet Halsman deftly avoided any explicit representation of the true subject of the picture. In this widely familiar portrait, Marilyn Monroe wears a white evening gown and stands with her back against two walls, one dark, the other light, her eyes half closed and her dark, lipsticked mouth partly open. During the hour I kept her cornered she enjoyed herself royally, and I. “Surrounded by three admiring men she smiled, flirted, giggled and wriggled with delight. Later, he recalled that she looked “as if she had been pushed into the corner cornered with no way to escape.” Then Halsman, his assistant, and Life’s reporter staged a “fiery” competition for Monroe’s attention. Halsman asked Monroe to stand in a corner, and placed his camera directly in front of her. In the spring of 1952, Halsman put his signature technique to work when LIFE sent him to Hollywood to photograph Marilyn Monroe. Too bad she was soon headed towards more drama and pain. She seems to be in a period of self-improvement, toning her body, mind, and spirit. The shot of her holding up two dumbbells while reclined on the weight bench happens to be my favorite Marilyn shot ever. There’s something about these striking images of a young Marilyn Monroe working out in her jeans and terry cloth bikini top that are at once both innocent and sexy– which I guess is the magic of her eternal allure. Her sex-appeal was not a put-on– it was her weapon and her defense.” –Philippe Halsman And such was her talent that each one of us felt that if only the other two would leave, something incredible would happen. Marilyn was cornered and she flirted with all three of us. I was facing her with my camera, the LIFE reporter and my assistant at my sides. Finally I asked her to stand in the corner of the room. ![]() I saw a photograph of Eleanora Duse and a multitude of books that I did not expect to find there, like the works of Dostoyevsky, of Freud, the History of Fabian Socialism, etc. ![]() What impressed me in its shabby living room was the obvious striving for self-improvement. “I drove to the outskirts of Los Angeles where Marilyn lived in a cheap two-room apartment. The resulting cover photo (at the end of this post) pushed her over the top, giving her immediate superstar status, and 20th Century Fox jumped to sweeten her existing multi-year contract to keep their starlet happy. In 1952, LIFE magazine assigned photographer Philippe Halsman to shoot Marilyn Monroe in her tiny Hollywood studio apartment. ![]()
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