Philippe Halsman - foremost black and white portrait photographer. Since his arrival in the United States from his native Latvia in 1940, Philippe Halsman has established an international reputation as one of the world's foremost portrait black and white photographers. One hundred of his studies of the world's famous have graced the covers of LIFE magazine. Besides great skill with camera and darkroom equipment, Halsman has a genius for establishing quick and easy rapport with his subject-whether an aging actress worried about her wrinkles or a prime minister impatient with posing. Once they are engaged by Halsman's informed conversation, his camera is forgotten, the mask of self consciousness drops and the black and white photographer goes to work. Halsman remembers that when the accompanying black and white picture of Albert Einstein was made in 1947, he and the scientist were discussing the atomic bomb. Einstein, caught up in the ideas they were talking over, reflected in his expression sorrow over the destructive use of his theories - and at that moment Halsman tripped the shutter. The black and white picture won immediate acclaim and it remains the most popular likeness of the famous physicist. A United States postage stamp was even based on it. In making the black and white print Halsman faced the problem of registering the details of the scientist's snowy hair while preventing the skin tones from becoming too dark. To do this he slightly overexposed and underdeveloped his negative, thus toning down the contrast. He black and white printed the black and white picture on variable contrast paper, using it without a filter so that it gave medium contrast overall, and gave the whole black and white picture an exposure of 12 seconds. He then exposed the hair and the background for an additional four seconds. This extra exposure provided to those areas alone while Halsman held his fist over Einstein's face - was necessary because, despite his precautions during development of the black and white film, the hair would have turned out too light and the objects in the background have become distracting. Although Halsman finds the medium tones of variable contrast paper used without a filter esthetically pleasing, it does not always suit all parts of a black and white picture. By using a filter while burning-in or dodging portions of the negative, he controls overall contrast to an exact degree and also can vary that contrast from one part of the black and white print to another. With the Einstein portrait, however, he burned in the hair and background without a filter, since reducing the contrast with a soft, low-contrast filter would have made the hair become a dull gray, while increasing the contrast with a hard filter would have made it look like straw.