The Jump Artist by Austin Ratner: book review

It’s September 1928 when the protagonist from Latvia, in The Jump Artist (2009), is accused of killing his father during a mountain trek in Austria. Philipp Halsman was a real person and this novel is inspired by Halsman’s life (1906-1979) – it’s not a biography, but rather, a fictional depiction of Halsman’s personal story based on “guesswork and invention” as well as his letters to his girlfriend, published in 1930, and his attorney Franz Pessler’s account of the trial.

Set from 1928-1959, it begins when Philipp’s father Max is brutally bludgeoned to the head and dies. A bloody stone was found at the scene, yet the wound was more likely from a pickaxe. Philipp said he was ahead of his father along the Zamserschinder track and only saw his father fall backwards, as if he fell accidently into the river Zamserbach below. Only four other travellers were known to be on the track at the time. But his lawyer, Pessler, adds that there were also road construction workers, with pickaxes, and a goat herder.

Philipp is accused of his father’s death. But Halsman is a Jew in an Aryan country. Will he receive a fair trial? The first trial is annulled after it was described as “a disgrace to the courts” – a trial in which he was found to be innocent by two Aryan officials. The novel is largely about the second trial – in which he was found guilty – and subsequent life after his sister, Liouba, wrote and travelled to visit a thousand influential people. The former premier of France, who was the current Minister of the Air (aviation), Paul Painleve, rescues Philipp from the Austrian prison after two years spent incarcerated.

On his release, Philipp chooses to live in Paris, and changes his first name to Philippe “to be more French.” He takes up photography as a “kind of existential exercise … without desire” – in the time when the camera was an Ica with ground-glass plates that required him to put his head underneath a black cloth. Photography “had become almost like a tic … he brought the camera everywhere and photographed everyone” – especially beautiful women, convincing them that he was a fashion photographer. “How strangely eager people were to be photographed,” he observed.

He began to photograph famous people, such as Andre Gide, the French author and Nobel Prize in Literature winner in 1947, and models for Vogue magazine. At the onset of Hitler’s invasion into Paris, when everyone evacuated, he remained. And then – as they say – the rest is history – photographing everyone from Albert Einstein and Lauren Bacall to Ingrid Bergman, Brigitte Bardot, Connie Ford, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marilyn Monroe.

The novel, although not directly biographical, is a fascinating read – about one man’s hardship, through to his renaissance, and eventual success. But it does make me want to read more - particularly for his photographical work during his later, more successful, years. 

The photographs here are actual Philippe Halsman portrayals from the Halsman website (http://philippehalsman.com/home/).