The Philippe Halsman Archive: Halsman Archive File 13 -Aldous Huxley 1958

Aldous Huxley, the British author, came by Halsman’s NY studio on April 21, 1968. Huxley had just returned from Mexico where he had experienced organic mind altering substances (mescaline aka Peyote and Psilocybin aka Magic mushrooms). The word “Psychedelic” had not even been invented at that point. Halsman has an assignment to shoot Huxley for the magazine Saturday Evening Post, which ran a series called “Adventures of The Mind.” Huxley had written the novel “Brave New World” as a satire in 1932, which explored the dystopian concept of a society which used pharmaceuticals to control the population. Later he said he set it to be 500-600 years in the future, but was surprised that some of his predictions were already coming true. Huxley was born into a family of biologists but because of his bad eyesight could not become a doctor, so he became a writer instead. Perhaps his bad vision heightened his other senses, because he had a great interest in researching and writing about the intersection of mysticism and society. The era he lived in saw the rise of the pharmaceutical industry and he rang the alarm about potential outcomes in an overly medicated society. By the time Halsman photographed Huxley, he had been living in LA and working as a screenwriter, and taking his paycheck and helping liberate jewish and leftist writers and artists from Nazi Germany. In LA he became a student of Vedantic culture, and wrote introductions for J. Krishnamurti’s The First and Last Freedom, and for the Bhaghadvad Gita. Huxley’s interest in Mysticism found its way into print in 1954 in The Doors of Perception, where he chronicled his own experiences with sacred plants which induced visions, dissolved the ego, and created an opportunity to feel unity with the divine. His book The Perennial Philosophy he introduced concepts to western culture about revelations beyond the five senses. Huxley was an Oxford trained scholar, and advised Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) at Harvard on LSD. Halsman had set up the studio to take a classical portrait of Huxley sitting in a chair, in front of a fireplace, but during the sitting Huxley was so animated talking about his recent experiences in Mexico that Halsman had to completely change his lighting set up mid shoot. Halsman went with speed strobes, so he could capture Huxley in motion as he described his own mystical encounters of union. Huxley was concerned about society and how biochemistry may be used to manipulate the masses in the future. He emphasized the personal journey of going into a quiet mind, free of thoughts and external influence by cultural symbols, and discovering their self transcendence. On his deathbed on Nov 22, 1963 he asked his wife to administer two 100 µg doses of LSD via an intramuscular injection. He was one of the first Psychonaut scholars, and we can only imagine the story and research he has been doing since he left his body.