![]() ![]() He had many subsequent exhibits and was the recipient of numerous awards, among them the National Medal of the Arts which he received from President George Bush in 1989 in a ceremony on the White House lawn. VJ Day in Times Square on Augprovided the opportunity for Eisenstaedt to photograph the image for which he is possibly most famous.Įisenstaedt had his first one-man exhibition in 1954 at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. ![]() At that point he was considered one of the masters of the candid photograph. I could stay for hours and watch a raindrop. A year later he became one of the original staff photographers for Life Magazine. For Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898-1995), the thing that was always there, within him, prompting and pointing the way, was his undying curiosity, which was tethered to his photographer’s eye: I see pictures all the time. By 1935 Eisenstaedt had acquired a Rolleiflex camera and immigrated to America. Another reveals the opera house La Scala, Milan. One of his more famous photographs from the early 1930s depicts a waiter at the ice rink of the Grand Hotel. Using cumbersome equipment with tripods and glass plate negatives, Eisenstaedt produced many photos on assignment of musicians, writers, and royalty. In 1927 Eisenstaedt sold his first photograph and began his free-lance career for Pacific and Atlantic Photos Agency in Berlin, which was taken over by Associated Press in 1931. Eisenstaedt was an extremely influential photographer and has been called the “father of photojournalism”.Īlfred Eisenstaedt died on 24 August 1995, aged 97.Alfred Eisenstadt ( 1898-1995) began taking pictures at the age of 14 when he was given his first camera, an Eastman Kodak Folding Camera with roll film. In 1954 Eisenstaedt held his first solo exhibition in New York and went on to win numerous awards, including the National Medal of the Arts award in 1989. Not only did he photograph famous personalities but he also captured spontaneous moments including VJ Day, which shows a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square in 1945, that became his most well-known contribution to LIFE magazine. ![]() Taken on V-J Day, 1945, as thousands jammed Times Square. There, he impressed the editor of LIFE magazine, particularly with his photographs of musicians, and over the next fifty years Eisenstaedt’s photographs appeared on more than eighty covers for LIFE. Eisenstaedt’s iconic photo: A jubilant American sailor clutched a dental assistant in a back-bending kiss at a moment of spontaneous joy about the long awaited WWII victory over Japan. However, he soon moved to New York where he hoped there would be even greater opportunities for a photojournalist. He began his photographic career at the agency Pacific and Atlantic Photos’ Berlin office in 1928, from where he was sent on various assignments, photographing portraits of a wide range of sitters, from writers to royalty.Įisenstaedt built a name for himself in Berlin and photographed figures such as Hitler and Mussolini at a meeting in Italy, and Goebbels at the 1933 League of Nations Assembly in Geneva. ![]() Although his employer tried to warn him off photography, he left his job and took his first steps towards fame. After the war, he sought any paid job he could find, even becoming a button and belt salesman.īy 1925, Eisenstaedt had saved up enough money for a Zeiss camera and, by 1929, was earning more as a freelance photographer than as a salesman. However, in 1914, with the outbreak of the war, his newfound passion for photography was interrupted when he was recruited into the German army. Eisenstaedt was given his first camera aged thirteen, and was soon inseparable from it. His father, who owned a department store, retired in 1906 and in doing so moved the family to Berlin. Above Image: Children at a Puppet Theatre, Paris, 1963 © Alfred Eisenstaedt/Magnum PhotosĪlfred Eisenstaedt was born into an affluent family on December 6th, 1898, in West Prussia. ![]()
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