In 1949, he married Kathy Kaye whom he met in New York City. citizen, he was not allowed to be sent overseas to cover the war efforts. He was also assigned to do various celebrity cover photographs by the magazine because, as a non-U.S. While working at LIFE, Alfred was called “Elsie” by his peers and he did many high-profile assignments for the magazine. After a year, he had mastered his photography skills and became one of the staff photographers for LIFE magazine. Eisenstaedt Builds His CareerĪlfred immigrated to America in 1935 after he had acquired a Rolleiflex camera. He later sold this picture for three marks to Der Weit Spiegel. The photo was taken from 50 yards away from a hillside, and the image perfectly captured the woman’s shadow that the sun had cast on the court. In 1927, while on vacation with his parents in Czechoslovakia, Alfred photographed a woman playing tennis. He would take pictures with his camera and develop them in his bathroom. With this job, he saved enough money to buy the necessary photographic equipment that he needed. In 1922, Alfred started a temporary career as a belt-and-button salesman.
He attended museums and learned the techniques of light and composition during this time. He was sent home to recuperate and to spend a year recovering before he could walk without using any aids.īut this gave him the time to indulge his interest in photography. During his military service, he suffered a shrapnel injury in both his legs. Alfred’s Military ServiceĪlfred entered the armed services at the age of 17, much like what many boys did at that time. If his uncle had not given him the camera, Alfred would have likely followed his father’s footsteps and became a merchant. This helped create a passion and a lifelong love of photography for Alfred. At the age of 14, Alfred’s uncle gave him an Eastman Kodak No.3 folding camera. The family stayed there until the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich.Īlfred father was a merchant. When he was eight years old, his entire family – parents Joseph and Regina and his two brothers – moved to Berlin. Early Life of Alfred EisenstaedtĪlfred Eisenstaedt was born on December 6, 1898, to a Jewish family in Dirschau, Poland. He is widely considered to be the “father of photojournalism.” He is best known for his work the LIFE magazine and for his iconic V-J Day Celebration photo.
Style: Photojournalism, candid photographyĪlfred Eisenstaedt was an American photographer who was born in Germany. Eisenstaedt was an extremely influential photographer and has been called the “father of photojournalism”.Īlfred Eisenstaedt died on 24 August 1995, aged 97.Born: in Dirschau (Tczew), West Prussia, Imperial Germanyĭied: (at age 96) in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts 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. 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. 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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