As the spirited celebration of Japan’s surrender grew, reporters from the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Associated Press, and other well-known publications descended on Times Square to record the spontaneous merriment that was enveloping the world’s most important crossroads. The publications’ photographers added more bodies to a burgeoning impromptu gala. One of those photographers represented LIFE magazine.
LIFE had made a name for itself during the war. The magazine that set out to picture the world had done just that. British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and Japanese emperor Hirohito had appeared on the cover of LIFE during the 1930s and 1940s. So, too, had actress Shirley Temple, steelworker Ann Zarik, and comedian Bob Hope. Throughout the early 1940s LIFE subscribers saw hundreds of war photographs, many enlarged on oversized pages. From 1943 onward, those images became less posed and closer to the battle lines.1 LIFE viewers saw American servicemen floating dead along European shores, lying lifeless on Pacific beaches, or scattering for cover on the deck of a burning aircraft carrier. Home front treatments included women’s baseball teams filling the entertainment gap left by depleted major league teams. During the war Americans bought LIFE at unprecedented levels because they wanted to see the war in all its forms. The magazine rapidly became an indispensible part of American culture during the 1940s.2
In April 1945 LIFE celebrated the end of war in Europe, but the rejoicing lasted only one issue. In the coming weeks, LIFE focused more on Pacific theater developments, including a major piece on the United States’ dropping of the atomic bomb. The published scenes of the destruction awed and shocked Americans. Some contemplated the future in the dust of such a tremendous explosion. Most were happy the Japanese fell victim to the new bomb’s might.
On August 14, 1945, LIFE sought pictures that differed from most others printed earlier in the war. On this day, LIFE wanted its viewers to know what the end of the war felt like. They didn’t know with any degree of certainty what incarnation that feeling might take, but they left it to their photographers to show them—just like they had with other events over the publication’s nine-year history. Those unsupervised approaches had rarely led to disappointment in the past and LIFE’s editors trusted their photographers to deliver again that day.
LIFE’s trust in their photographers was especially complete when Alfred Eisenstaedt was on assignment. He had photographed the people and personalities of World War II, some prior to the declaration of war and others even before LIFE existed. As a German Jew in the 1930s, he chronicled the developing storm, including a picture of Benito Mussolini’s first meeting with Adolph Hitler in Venice, on June 13, 1934. In another shoot he photographed an Ethiopian soldier’s bare, cracked feet on the eve of Fascist Italy’s attack in 1935.
After the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, Eisenstaedt focused on the American home front. In 1942 Eisenstaedt photographed a six-member Missouri draft board classifying a young farmer as 2-C, indicating draft deferment because of his occupation’s importance to the nation. For another series in 1945, he visited Washington and photographed freshman senators performing comical monologues and musical numbers to entertain Capitol reporters. During World War II, Eisenstaedt showed the world what war looked like on the U.S. mainland.
On the day World War II ended, Eisenstaedt entered Times Square dressed in a tan suit, a white shirt with a lined tie, tan saddle shoes, and a Leica camera hanging from his neck. Despite his distinctive ensemble, he traveled stealthily among the kaleidoscope of moving parts, looking for the picture. He made sure not to call attention to himself. He was on the hunt. He knew there was a picture in the making. Kinetic energy filled the square. Eisenstaedt wished for others to feel it, too. To create that sense, Eisenstaedt’s photo needed a tactile element. It was a tall order for the five-foot, four-inch photographer. He relished the challenge.
At some point after 1:00 pm Eisenstaedt took a picture of several women celebrating in front of a theater across the street from the 42nd Street subway station stairwell. The picture showed ladies throwing pieces of paper into the air, creating a mini-ticker-tape parade. While the photo had its charm, it was not the defining picture Eisenstaedt was searching for that day.
Shortly after closing the shutter on that scene, Eisenstaedt turned to his left and looked up Broadway and 7th Avenue to where 43rd Street connected to Times Square’s main artery. As Eisenstaedt continued to search for a photograph that would forever define the moment at hand, he peered around and beneath, but probably not over, the sea of humanity. News of the war’s end had primed America’s meeting place for a one-in-a-million kind of picture. A prospect would present itself soon. Eisenstaedt knew that. So he looked and waited.