Dali Atomicus water confusion

November 21st, 2007 - 23:39 | 8 comments

Bleurgh. Cold. Inevitable really, given that everybody around me has been going down for weeks. Lemsip ftw.

I’m giving a presentation on the photographer Philippe Halsman this Friday. This is probably his most famous image, Dali Atomicus:

Dali Atomicus

A collaboration between him and the pictured Salvador Dali, it’s possibly the most famous surrealist photograph¹. If you look at a larger version, the position of the cats mirrors their image in the left-hand painting. It’s a wonder the shot took ‘only’ 28 attempts (with a darkroom development period between each). I always feel sorry for the cats.

But here’s what’s confusing me: the water. If the picture truly is a one-shot affair with no manipulation, it’s a very odd result - the path of the water doesn’t conform to Newtonian gravity. The obvious possibility is an assistant with a bucket moving the path, but the shot’s apparent short shutter-speed seems to rule this out. The most plausible method is suggested here: the person threw the water then got the hell of out the frame. That seems unlikely, looking at the scale of the room, but might be possible. Or maybe the water was released above the frame? Would water retain that kind of a path when falling? Given the disruption of the stream by the uppermost cat, the water must have been ’spread’ from left to right. It’s much thinner towards the bottom left, which is curious.

There are wider-angle shots, but nothing that gives any hints. I think I need experiments to figure out how this was done, but they might not go down well in the university studios…:-)

prepared to be proven wrong on this [↩]

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8 Responses to “Dali Atomicus water confusion”

1 Nod Nov 22nd, 2007 at 12:25 am

uhoh this means you have to recreate it?

What makes you think it is all water? Could it be ice? or a transparent polymer? Or (less likely) a bubble? I think the rest just requires a correct perspective. Anyway hopefully suggested at least one new idea for you to experiment with, with any luck outside of my home
2 Halsman archive Nov 22nd, 2007 at 7:51 am

The water was thrown from the left, the cats from the right. Dali’s first idea was to stick dynamite up a duck’s ass and explode it. Philippe suggested the water and cats. Good luck on your presentation!
3 Andrew Nov 22nd, 2007 at 11:11 am

I’m not even going to think about recreating this one
I’m assuming it’s water as that’s how the photographer described the shot.
4 Ed Nov 22nd, 2007 at 11:38 am

Could the water be flowing on plastic/glass? If you look at the shadows you can see a square. Also the top cat looks like it’s standing. Cats when jumping pull in their paws don’t they?

Ed
5 Halsman Archive Nov 25th, 2007 at 10:03 pm

It is hard to imagine in our day and age that any thing in the past was actually done by hand and experimental and organic. it took 6 hours and 26 attempts to get this photograph correct. it is a frozen moment in time. beautiful in its own right. don’t try too hard to dissect it. enjoy it. its all about quantum physics. how nothing in reality is actually touching, all suspended relationships. its an abstract idea.
6 ??? Dec 9th, 2007 at 11:53 pm

i have the original phot and you can see the strings holding the things and also the canvas mirroring the cats is empty so it was added after the shot now for the water i find no explanation…
7 Nate Jan 4th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

I read somewhere that they counted to four. On three, the bucket of water and the cats were thrown and then on four, Dali jumped into the air and the photograph was taken. My guess is that the assistant who threw the water used that second between three and four to jump backwards out of the frame. Would that explain the motion of the water? I have no idea.
8 Tom Cohoe Jan 6th, 2008 at 11:59 pm

If you throw water out of a container like a pail, it does not come out in a stream, but breaks up into sheets. This is what has happened here. You can see the sheet breaking into drops on both ends. The sheet has its odd shape because it is flying through the atmosphere, so it is as if a wind is blowing on it causing it to wave, like a flag. The water has been thrown from the foreground and is flying towards Dali and the cats. If you fling a gallon or two of water from a pail, you will get all kinds of weird shapes that don’t look like a stream of water.

Try it.

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