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Philippe was born into a midlle-class Jewish family in Riga, Latvia. His father was Morduch (Max) Halsman, a dentist, and his wife Ita Grintuch who was a grammar school principal. The Baltics had been provinces in the Russian Empire, but influenced by Germany and with an important German ethnic minority. Germany was especially influential in education. Halsman studied electrical engineering in Dresden. He went on a hiking tour in the Austrian Alps with his father (September 1928). His father fell and died of a head injury. The circumstances of the injury were disputed. Philippe was arrested and tried for patricide. He was found guolty and sentenced to 4 years in prison. In a time of rising anti-Semitism, the case was seized upon by the anti-Semetic press in Germany and other countries. Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann supported Halsman. Austrian authorities released him (1931). He had to agree to leave Austria. He emigrated to France and settled to in Paris. There he pursued his photographic career. As far as we know his photographic career was conducted in France and America. We do not know of any work in Latvia. He first developed a reputation with fashion magazines such as Vogue. He also developed a reputation as a talented portrait photographer. His style was a sharp focus and and closely cropped image. He was still in France when the Germans invaded and as a foreign Jew would have targeted by Vichy and the Germans. He made it to Marseille and managed to obtain a U.S. visa. He was assisted by Einstein. In America Halsman also gained success as a photographer. Cosmetics firm Elizabeth Arden gave him his first break. He photograophed model Constance Ford against the American flag in an advertising campaign for Arden's 'Victory Red' lipstick (1941). He then began getting commissions Life, the first was photographing hat designs (1942). He also began getting commissions from important people for portraits. One of the most famous was aensive Einstein after the War, dismayed about the role he had played in the atom bomb (1947).
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