A look through the lens of Alfred Eisenstaedt
Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was born in 1898 in the city of Dirschau, Germany, which is now in Poland. He began shooting pictures at age 12 when his uncle gave him a camera. “I began clicking madly everything in sight,″ he recalled.
Whether he was photographing ordinary people or great world figures, Eisenstaedt was a master at finding the detail that told the big story. His style was unaffected, naturalistic; he let his subjects speak for themselves.
Marlene Dietrich, Anna-May Wong and Leni Riefenstahl pose at a ball in Berlin, Germany, 1928. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
After serving in World War I, in which he suffered shrapnel injuries, Eisenstaedt went to work as a salesman in Berlin to help out his family, whose department store business had run into hard times.
Three days after quitting as a salesman, he began several years of free-lance work for The Associated Press by heading to Stockholm to photograph writer Thomas Mann at the Nobel Prize ceremonies. His photographs for a couple of German picture magazines and for the news service established his reputation both as a photographer and as a journalist.
This Associated Press advert appeared in many US newspapers in 1935. (AP Corporate Archives)
Field manoeuvres of the Ethiopian soldiers as the Empire prepares for any eventuality in its quarrel with Italy, July 23, 1935. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Native operators in the radio station at Addis Ababa in 1935, taken over by the Abyssinian government from the Italians. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Two Ethiopian priests in 1935. The hats contain stone tablets on which are engraved the ten commandments. The religion is ancient Christian, Coptic, which is said to date back to the second century of the Christian era, therefore the oldest form of Christian worship. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
The Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I at home working at his desk in April 1935. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Prince Sachle Selassie, youngest son of Emperor Haile Selassie, with his nursemaid, in Addis Ababa in 1935. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Headdress and plumed cloak of one of the Emperor of Ethiopia's personal bodyguards, in 1935. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Children studying posters advertising a cinema in Addis Ababa in 1935. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Turkish girls work on a model in a millinery class in a high school in Ankara, the capital of Turkey in February 1935. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Carrier pigeon bicycle patrol of the German Reichswehr in an undated photo at an unknown location. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Portrait of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw taken at his London flat, on June 13, 1932. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
A shorthand note by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw upon a leather writing case adorned with his initials photographed at his London flat, on June 13, 1932. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
German movie star Heinrich George, in the role of Franz Biberkopf, pictured on set sitting on the window sill, as the film team waits five hours for the sun to come out to film a scene of one minute, in the production of the film "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (Berlin Alexander Square), after the novel by Alfred Doeblin, in Berlin, Germany, June 5, 1931. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Swedish actor Goesta Ekman and Mrs. Ekman, Greta Sundstroem on the balcony of their house in Stockholm, Sweden on June 21, 1934. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Swedish actor Goesta Ekman applies make-up for his role as “Herod” in his wardrobe on June 21, 1934 in Stockholm, Sweden. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Captain von Schiller, who steered the airship Graf Zeppelin, LZ 127, drinks a fresh coconut for breakfast in Pernambuco, northeast Brazil during the 14-hour stopover, after arriving here on a seven-day journey from Europe to South America, August 1933. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Passengers are pictured in their cabin in the airship Graf Zeppelin, LZ 127, as they sail over the Atlantic Ocean in a seven-day journey from Europe to South America, August 1933. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
The German steamer "Madrid" is seen in the southern Atlantic. Photo taken aboard the airship Graf Zeppelin, LZ 127, sailing over the Atlantic Ocean in a seven-day journey from Europe to South America, August 1933. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Local artist, Willy Jaeckel shows the portrait he painted of German writer Gerhart Hauptmann, right, at Hauptmann's home in Hiddensee at the Baltic Sea, eastern Germany, August 1931. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Famous Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg, prepares to start the Gala Concert at the Covert Gebouw, in Amsterdam, in 1934, where the German Requiem by Brahms is to be performed. This was the first time Mengelberg has allowed a reporter to take photos during rehearsals and the official performance. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Miss Maj Kalmberg, director of the Vitamin Department, controls the weight of a rat before the injection with E vitamin on June 26, 1934 in the laboratory of the Institute for Research of Vitamin in Stockholm, Sweden where German-born Swedish biochemist and chemistry Nobel Prize laureate in 1929 Dr. Hans von Euler-Chelpin is researching. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Three assistants of German-born Swedish biochemist and chemistry Nobel Prize laureate in 1929 Dr. Hans von Euler-Chelpin working on research of biological attributes of plants on June 26, 1934 in the laboratory of the Institute for Research of Vitamin in Stockholm, Sweden. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
Soldiers of the Greek Republican Guard - the Evzones - formerly the Royal Bodyguard, wear a ceremonial full-dress uniform. The uniform consists of a bodice and kilts and petticoat of white, with a braided tunic. Evzones, the elite Greek regiment, climb the stairs on the battlements of their barracks in Athens, Greece in February 1935. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
A sea of corn at a recently built and modernly equipped granary in Emden, Germany, February 1935. When corn arrives at the granary it has a tendency to overheat, in which condition it rapidly deteriorates. In order to prevent this it is spread out on floors, and men are employed in turning it over constantly to aerate it and render it fit for storage. (AP Photo/Alfred Eisenstaedt)
When Henry Luce, founder of the Time empire, decided to start a picture magazine, Eisenstaedt was extended an offer and he came to the United States in 1935. While working on the prototype of what would become Life, Luce said, his faith the magazine would succeed was confirmed when he saw Eisenstaedt’s photographs of a sharecropper family in the South.
Boat manifest listing Alfred Eisenstaedt’s arrival in New York, 1935. (National Archives and Records Administration/Ancestry.com via AP)
He found considerable fame at LIFE Magazine after he photographed the iconic V-J Day kiss in Times Square. It became his most well known photo and one of the most famous photos of the 20th century.
German-American photographer and photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt poses at the opening on May 5, 1986 of an exhibition of his famous pictures taken for "Life" magazine at the Kultur Kontor der Hamburger Hanse Vier, in Hamburg, Germany, with one of his best know photographs taken during the celebrations of V-J Day in Times Square, New York on August 1945. (AP Photo/Jockel Finck)
Alfred Eisenstaedt shown outside a New York television studio with Edith Shain on July 28, 1980, the nurse he photographed being kissed in Times Square on VJ-Day. (AP Photo)
This text contains extracts from an Associated Press article, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Master Life Photographer, Dead at 96, first published on August 24, 1995.
The AP Corporate Archives contributed to this blog.