AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Life magazine pictures of famous people and everyday moments, above all V-J Day in Times Square (1945)
- Worked in
- Black and white
- Camera
- Best known for his small 35mm Leica; his first camera was a Kodak folding camera
- Also
- One of Life’s four original staff photographers, with more than 90 covers; National Medal of Arts, 1989
- Start with
- Eisenstaedt: Remembrances (Little, Brown, 1990)
Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898–1995) was a German-born American photojournalist. He began in Berlin in the late 1920s and in 1936 became one of the first four staff photographers of Life magazine. His picture of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square at the end of the Second World War is one of the best-known photographs of the twentieth century.
The story
On 14 August 1945, crowds filled Times Square in New York to celebrate the end of the war with Japan. Alfred Eisenstaedt was there for Life, with his Leica. “In Times Square on V.J. Day, I saw a sailor running along the street grabbing every girl in sight,” he remembered. So he ran ahead of him, looking back over his shoulder. When the sailor kissed a woman dressed in white, he turned around and pressed the shutter. “I took exactly four pictures. It was done within a few seconds.”
Speed like that came from a long road. Born in 1898 in Dirschau, West Prussia, he got his first camera as a boy. In the First World War he served in the artillery and was wounded in 1918. After the war he sold buttons and belts in Berlin. In 1927, on holiday in Bohemia, in today’s Czech Republic, he photographed a tennis player and sold the picture to a German weekly. Much later he wrote on the back of a print: “This picture of a tennis player in Johannisbach, Bohemia, started my career, 1927.”
By 1929 photography paid better than selling, and he became a full-time photographer for the Associated Press in Germany. But he was Jewish, and Germany under the Nazis was no place to stay. In 1935 he moved to New York, and the next year he joined the new Life magazine as one of its four original staff photographers. He stayed on staff until 1972 and made more than 90 covers.
He liked to meet people simply, with a small camera. “I don’t come as a photographer. I come as a friend,” he once told New York Magazine.
One early morning in 1950, at the University of Michigan, he watched the drum major of the marching band rehearse. A little boy began to run after him. Then other children on the field ran after the boy, and Eisenstaedt ran after them all.
He died in 1995, at 96, on Martha’s Vineyard. He knew the kiss would outlive him. “When people don’t know me anymore they will remember that picture,” he said. Yet he hoped for a second, happier memory, made without any plan. “Another picture I hope to be remembered by is this one of the drum major rehearsing at the University of Michigan.”
The work
- 1898Born on 6 December in Dirschau, West Prussia
- 1918Wounded while serving in the German artillery in the First World War
- 1927His first published picture, a tennis player in Bohemia, is sold to a German weekly
- 1929Becomes a full-time photographer for the Associated Press in Germany
- 1935Emigrates to the United States and settles in New York
- 1936Joins Life as one of its four original staff photographers
- 1945Photographs the V-J Day kiss in Times Square on 14 August
- 1989Receives the National Medal of Arts
- 1995Dies on 23 August on Martha’s Vineyard, aged 96
Lessons
Move with the moment. In Times Square he ran ahead of the sailor and kept looking back. Four frames, a few seconds, and the picture was done.
Come as a friend. He said he came to people as a friend, not as a photographer, and he carried only a small camera.
Watch the edges of the main event. At the University of Michigan the drum major was the subject, but the picture was the children running after him.
Try this: go early one morning to a place where people practise something, like a sports field or a band rehearsal. Watch the people around the main action, not the action itself, and make just a few frames when something unplanned happens.
Gear
35mm rangefinder camera: he used many cameras but was best known for his Leica. He had it with him in Times Square in 1945. In 1944 Life called him the “dean of today’s miniature-camera experts.”
Folding camera: his first camera, a gift in his childhood, was an Eastman Kodak folding camera with roll film.
In 1925, while still working as a salesman, he saved enough money to buy a Zeiss camera.
Books
Eisenstaedt: Remembrances (Little, Brown, Boston, 1990; a Bulfinch Press book). Edited by Doris C. O’Neil, with an introduction by Bryan Holme. It has more than 125 black-and-white photographs from his whole career, from his early work in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s through his long years at Life. A large book of about 160 pages that works well as a first overview.
Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt: A Self-Portrait (Abbeville Press, New York, 1985). A book of 120 pages built from interviews that Peter Adam recorded with Eisenstaedt for the BBC series Great Master Photographers. His own words run next to many photographs from across his career, so you hear how he thought about people, timing and luck. A good choice for readers who want the man as well as the pictures.
Witness to Our Time (Viking, 1966). Published for the 30th anniversary of Life magazine, with a foreword by Henry Luce, the founder of Life. It has more than 400 color and black-and-white photographs, including the V-J Day kiss and his 1959 portrait of a young Truman Capote skating at Rockefeller Center. Look for it in used bookshops if you want to see his work as Life presented it in the 1960s.
In the mid-20th century, a momentary pause in the thrum of humanity was etched into the annals of history by a German-born American photographer, Alfred Eisenstaedt. His subject? A sailor's passionate kiss with a dental assistant in the heart of Times Square. What started as an ordinary day on August 14, 1945, would eventually be hailed as one of the most iconic photographs in history.