Alfred Eisenstaedt

Before television and the internet, Life magazine was a favorite vehicle for bringing the week’s news to thousands of American households. Photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898–1995) shaped and was shaped by Life, and together they helped to broaden Americans’ awareness of world events. Working almost exclusively in black and white, Eisenstaedt photographed the rich, the famous, and the anonymous in telling and sometimes poignant shots.

Called by many “the father of photojournalism,” Eisenstaedt was born in Dirshau in West Prussia, Germany. His interest in camera work was precocious: he began taking photographs at age fourteen using an Eastman Kodak folding camera with roll film. He sold his first photograph in 1927, when photojournalism was in its infancy. He started as a free-lancer and then worked for the Berlin office of the Associated Press. He emigrated to the United States in 1935, the year before Life was established. Eisenstaedt was one of the first photographers to be hired by the magazine, and he ultimately completed eighty-six covers and 2500 assignments portraying a wide range of events and people. His subjects included Marlene Dietrich, Hitler and Mussolini shaking hands, the aftermath of Hiroshima, Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer conferring, John F. Kennedy, and countless ballerinas. His last photographs were of Hillary and Bill Clinton, with their daughter Chelsea, visiting Martha’s Vineyard, Eisenstaedt’s summer home for fifty years.

Eisenstaedt’s most famous image, VJ Day in Times Square, 1945, showed a sailor impulsively kissing a nurse—a total stranger to him—in the midst of a parade celebrating the end of World War II. “I saw a sailor running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight,” he explained. “Whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn't make any difference. I was running ahead of him with my Leica looking back over my shoulder. … Then suddenly, in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse.” [1]

In 1954, the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, acknowledged his significant accomplishments with a major exhibition. At the age of ninety he received a National Medal of the Arts award from President George H.W. Bush.

While millions of Americans recognized Eisenstaedt’s photographs and looked forward to his weekly Life installment, the man behind the camera was less well known. His approach was low key and unobtrusive. “My style hasn't changed much in all these sixty years. I still use, most of the time, existing light and try not to push people around. I have to be as much a diplomat as a photographer. People often don't take me seriously because I carry so little equipment and make so little fuss. When I married in 1949, my wife asked me. ‘But where are your real cameras?’ I never carried a lot of equipment. My motto has always been, ‘Keep it simple.’” [2]

Notes:

[1] Eisenstaedt, quoted in Ray Zone, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Santa Monica, CA: Fetterman Gallery, 2007.

[2] Eisenstaedt, quoted in Zone, Alfred Eisenstaedt.