Most people recognize the faces he immortalized. Almost no one could indentify him, even if he held up one of his famous photos. Alfred Eisenstaedt, the father of photojournalism, took pictures of the famous, infamous, and everyday people caught in fascinating daily routines. While few ever heard his voice, for much of the twentieth century they stared at the scenes he captured. The view he provided awed his audience.
Alfred Eisenstaedt specialized in suspending time. His photographs still give reason for pause. Eisenstaedt’s collage of wide smiles, surprised looks, and candid expressions testify to the photographer’s developed skills, inherent sense of timing, and quick reflexes. Opportunities present themselves to many. Few seize upon or even recognize the unfolding prospect. Eisenstaedt saw pictures before their conception, positioned himself inconspicuously, and at the most opportune instance pounced via the pressing of a camera’s button. The take, sometimes an upsetting sight, other times a most pleasurable instance, focused millions of people’s attention.
From a very young age, Eisenstaedt was called to take photographs. Born in 1898 to a Jewish family in Dirschau, West Prussia, in 1906 his family moved to Berlin, where his love of photography first took hold. In 1912 an uncle fostered that love by buying his nephew an Eastman Kodak Folding Camera No. 3.1 Like a boy in a 1950s American town might run off to a neighborhood baseball diamond with a new bat, Eisenstaedt carried his camera to local venues in search of photographic subjects. He was not overly selective. Almost everything the young photographer saw qualified as picturesque.2 Unmoving statues in front of old buildings, streaming light through green leaves in the spring, or old men gathered under a street lamp at night called to the young photographer. He saw the extraordinary in the ordinary. At a young age he began developing his own photos. While not yet his profession, photography was already proving to be his passion.
In 1916 events far removed from his boyhood pursuits determined Eisenstaedt’s future trajectory. For this journey he carried a rifle instead of his camera. After his seventeenth birthday, the German high command drafted Eisenstaedt into the army, where he served as a cannoneer with the 55th Artillery Regiment. In that same year, a photographer took his picture in Naumburg, Germany, as he posed with eight comrades. With the exception of Eisenstaedt, everyone in the picture died in World War I,3 or the Great War, as people called it at the time. Eisenstaedt’s survival owed little to his fighting skills. During a battle at Flanders on April 9, 1918, an enemy explosion over Eisenstaedt’s head shot shrapnel through his legs. As he fell, the bottom half of his body went numb. He wondered if both his legs had been shot off. With machine-gun fire ricocheting all around him, others in his regiment could not risk trying to rescue him. As Eisenstaedt lay helpless on the battlefield, he thought he would be killed.4
Two hours later, Red Cross personnel drove up, put Eisenstaedt in a wagon, and took him to a facility near Lille, France, for medical treatment. While there he learned that his legs could be saved. He also learned that everyone in his battery had been killed.5 His wounds prevented him from fighting during the last months of World War I. For the next two months he walked on crutches, and for the next ten months he needed a cane to move about.
In the coming months the injury kept him out of several other potentially fatal battles. During this reprieve from the trenches he visited local museums and studied the work of great artists. Eisenstaedt took particular note of their handling of composition and lighting.6
Shortly after World War I ended in 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—Germany’s economy spiraled downward. Inflation in the postwar economy soared. The rising cost of goods far outpaced people’s incomes. Like many other Germans, Eisenstaedt’s family lost the savings they had put away prior to the war. To help pay the family’s bills, Alfred sold belts and buttons. Though by his own account he was not a very good salesman, his sales pitches sustained him well enough to continue buying camera equipment.7
Eisenstaedt’s career as a photographer began with the sale of his first photo to Der Weltspiegel in 1927.8 The picture focused on a woman playing tennis in Johannisbad, Bohemia. With a friend’s help, Eisenstaedt cropped the picture via an enlarger to focus attention on the tennis player and her shadow. Der Weltspiegel published the photograph with the caption “Fall—Shadows Grow Long.”9 The editors offered to consider Eisenstaedt’s other treatments, “as long as they are good ones.”10 In 1928 he became good enough for the Associated Press to hire him. While the Great Depression settled in during the late 1920s and early 1930s, Eisenstaedt expanded his portfolio of captivating images. Several respected photo journals published some of those photos. While not yet a household name, Alfred Eisenstaedt’s work earned increased attention in photography circles.
As the 1930s progressed, so, too, did the political fanaticism in Europe. Surely Eisenstaedt took notice of rising tensions as he viewed increasingly disturbing developments through his camera’s lens. In 1934 Eisenstaedt found himself uncomfortably close to one of those disturbances. During a shoot of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s “big shot” Fascist leader, officials suspected Eisenstaedt’s 90mm lens was a weapon.11 Consequently, the Italian guard held him for approximately an hour while they checked his credentials with the Associated Press. During another photo shoot a few years later, Eisenstaedt froze Joseph Goebbels’ cold stare for the camera. Despite the terror associated with photographing the ruthless Nazi propaganda minister, Eisenstaedt explained, “When I have a camera in my hand I know no fear.”12
The suspension of fear did not affect his good judgment, at least not for a prolonged time. With Nazi fanaticism spreading, Europe proved no place for a Jewish photographer. In 1935 Eisenstaedt left Germany with his Rolleiflex camera and settled in New York City. Owing to his impressive photograph portfolio, Time founder Henry Luce hired Eisenstaedt and three other photographers (Margaret Bourke-White, Thomas McAvoy, and Peter Stackpole) to work on Project X, the successful start-up for the enormously popular LIFE magazine.
LIFE wanted to introduce Americans to a photojournalistic publication that employed numerous, large, captivating images to tell the world’s story. For the West Prussian–born photographer, LIFE’s new approach was “old hat.”13 The photographer and the magazine proved a perfect match. LIFE did not hamstring their individualistic photographer, who had grown accustomed to making his own rules. As Eisenstaedt later explained, “At LIFE we were never told how to photograph. We were all individualists. We could do anything we wanted to do.”14 The product Eisenstaedt provided LIFE was the photo journal’s reward for their purposeful lack of supervision. Starting with the magazine’s second issue in 1936, Eisenstaedt’s photos graced eighty-six of the publication’s covers.
Eisenstaedt’s portfolio of memorable images expanded dramatically during his LIFE years. He photographed scenery, animals, and people of all walks of life. He focused on athletes, artists, actors, and government officials from numerous countries. Some of his best work continued to include common folk captured in unique circumstances. These images contributed handsomely to his celebrated collection.
To capture one of his most famous pictures, in 1933 Eisenstaedt sat one seat over from a young girl during a premier at La Scala, Milan’s famous opera house. While the lighting and background enhance, the photograph, the girl’s focus on a friend to her left draws attention. If she had become aware of Eisenstaedt’s presence the picture would likely be much less interesting.
That phenomenon, removing the photographer’s presence from the photograph, characterized many of Eisenstaedt’s creations. No doubt his short frame (five feet, four inches) aided this desired effect, but his stealth-like practices contributed more. Eisenstaedt’s approaches included the use of natural light rather than flash photography, carrying little equipment, and inconspicuously waiting as he let the subject(s) offer him the moment worth capturing. As he once explained, “I could sit in the first row of the audience and nobody paid attention to me. Sometimes I even sat among the musicians dressed as one of them, my tripod between my legs. A little later I bought an attachable silent diaphragm shutter—it didn’t make a click.”15 Eisenstaedt would go to great lengths to remain unnoticed as he captured people’s natural mannerisms and movements.
Four photos he snapped for a LIFE series in 1944 about World War II soldiers bidding farewell, Eisenstaedt used a 2¼ Rolleiflex, “because you can hold a Rolleiflex without raising it to your eye; so they didn’t see you taking the pictures.”16 In one of those photos taken at Pennsylvania Station in New York City, a tearful woman stands beside her husband, unaware of Eisenstaedt’s presence. As a result, the photo maintains a moment-in-time appeal. A posed look would appear contrived and artificial, thereby of little interest to the viewer. Eisenstaedt labored to avoid both such conditions.
As World War II’s end approached, many more opportunities presented themselves to the photographer whose perceptive eyes constantly looked for such offers. His subjects continued to be unaware of his attention and surprised by his captivating creations.
On the morning of August 14, 1945, George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer knew of LIFE magazine, but, did not know Alfred Eisenstaedt. Eisenstaedt knew World War II but did not know George or Greta. On the day World War II ended, the LIFE photographer, the World War II sailor, and the Austrian, born dental assistant crossed paths in Times Square. At the time they saw nothing significant or special about their shared moment. Later, others saw their meeting differently. So did they.