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LIFE’s photographers were as celebrated for their photojournalistic chops as for the imaginative methods they devised for illustrating what might otherwise have been mundane or utterly straightforward stories.

For this 1952 portrait of Armenian-born American mathematician Ervand Kogbetliantz as he poses behind the transparent board of the three-dimensional form of chess he devised, Joel used a special wide-angle architectural camera that used a spinning propeller to even out the light. Joel illuminated the whole thing with a series of heavy-duty strobe lights, and had Kogbetliantz stand on a ladder so that only his head was exposed, visually emphasizing the mathematician’s intellectual nature.

Here, LIFE.com highlights the magazine’s most innovative pictures.