Alfred Eisenstaedt - 1
 

Alfred Eisenstaedt

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Alfred Eisenstaedt (December 6, 1898 – August 24, 1995) was a German American photographer and photojournalist. He is renowned for his candid photographs, frequently made using a 35mm Leica M3 rangefinder camera. He is best remembered for his photograph capturing the celebration of V-J Day.Eisenstaedt was born into a Jewish family in Dirschau (Tczew) in West Prussia, Imperial Germany. His family moved to Berlin in 1906. Eisenstaedt served in the German Army's artillery during World War I, being wounded on April 9, 1918. While working as a belt and button salesmen in 1920s Weimar Germany, Eisenstaedt began taking photographs as a freelancer for the Berliner Tageblatt.Eisenstaedt was successful enough to become a full-time photographer in 1929. Four years later he photographed a meeting between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Italy. Other notable pictures taken by Eisenstaedt in his early career include a waiter ice skating in St. Moritz in 1932 and Joseph Goebbels at the League of Nations in Geneva in 1933. Although initially friendly, Goebbels scowled for the photograph when he learned that Eisenstaedt was Jewish.
Because of oppression in Hitler's Nazi Germany, Eisenstaedt emigrated to the United States in 1935, where he lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, for the rest of his life. He worked as a photographer for Life magazine from 1936 to 1972. His photos of news events and celebrities, such as Sophia Loren and Ernest Hemingway, appeared on more than 86 Life covers.Eisenstaedt, known as "Eisie" to his close friends, enjoyed his annual August vacations on the island of Martha's Vineyard for 50 years. When on assignment in the Galapagos Islands,[vague] Eisenstaedt left the Galapagos prior to the assignment's completion so he could arrive on time for his Vineyard vacation in the Menemsha area of the town of Chilmark.[citation needed] During his Vineyard summers, he would conduct photographic "experiments," by working with various lenses, filters, and prisms, but always working with natural light. Eisenstaedt was fond of Martha's Vineyard's photogenic lighthouses, and was the focus of lighthouse fund raisers for the Vineyard Environmental Research Institute (VERI), the lease-holder of the lighthouses. One fund raiser was titled "Eisenstaedt Day" and was an international event. The last Eisenstaedt lighthouse fundraiser was held in August 1995, the month of his death on Martha's Vineyard.
Eisenstaedt's last photographs were of President Bill Clinton with wife, Hillary, and daughter, Chelsea, on August 1993, at the Granary Gallery in West Tisbury on Martha's Vineyard. This historic "private" photo-session took place in a fenced-in courtyard protected by the Secret Service for over one hour, and was fully documented by William E. Marks. Marks, who took hundreds of photographs of Eisenstaedt in every situation imaginable for over ten years,[citation needed] also photographed Eisenstaedt signing his famous V-J Day photograph on the morning of his passing.
Eisenstaedt died in his bed at midnight in his beloved Menemsha Inn cottage known as the "Pilot House".
His death was attended by his sister-in-law, Lucille (Lulu) Kaye, and his close friend, publisher/author William E. Marks.

Alfred Eisenstaedt and Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood, 1953

V.J. Day Times Square
1945

Children at Puppet Theatre

Marilyn Monroe with husband Joe DiMaggio

Premiere at La Scala, Milan," 1933.

Ice Skating Waiter, St. Moritz," 1932

Monks Along the River Arno, Florence," 1935

Ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov posed for this 1980 picture.

Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Culture and Propaganda,
at the League of Nations, Geneva, 1933.

Winston Churchhill gives the victory sign at a political rally, Liverpool, 1951.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet for the first time, Venice 1934.

Mussolini gives a speech from a balcony in Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1934

A mother and her child in the bombed landscape of Hiroshima, Japan, 1946.

Atomic scientists Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer
compare notes at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, 1947.

Albert Einstein

Repairing the Hull of the "Graf Zeppelin" during the flight over the Atlantic, 1934.

Waiters watching Sonya Henie skate, St. Moritz, 1932

Marilyn Monroe, 1953

Marilyn Monroe in 1953

Marlene Dietrich, Berlin, 1928

Dancers pause in the window of their dancing room at the
Balanchine School of the American Ballet Theatre, New York City, 1936.

Nurses at Roosevelt Hospital, New York City, 1937.

Hazing at West Point, 1936.

President John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office, 1961

Lonny Fair and family, 1935

A soldier's feet, Ethiopia, 1935.

Trees in Snow, St. Moritz Switzerland, 1947.

The famous Clock in the old Pennsylvania Station, New York City, 1943.

Sophia Loren in character for the movie "Marriage Italian Style," Rome, 1964.

Ernest Hemingway, 1952

John F. Kennedy and his daughter, Caroline, at home in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, 1960

Mrs. Kennedy and Caroline, painting on their canvases in Hyannis Port, 1961

Robert Frost at his desk, Ripton, Vermont, 1955

George Bernard Shaw at his home in London, 1932

Katherine Hepburn, New York City, 1938

J. Robert Oppenheimer in a porkpie hat, Princeton, New Jersey, 1947

Bette Davis, 1938

Artist Augustus John completeing a portrait in his studio in Hampshire, England, 1951

T.S. Eliot in his office at his publishers, Faber and Faber, London, 1951

Thomas Hart Benton with a self-portrait, 1970.

Clark Gable and Jeanette McDonald on the set of "San Francisco," 1936

Violinist Nathan Milstein, pianist Vladimer Horowitz, and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky
rest backstage during the intermission of a concert at the Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin 1932

Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, Leni Riefenstahl, Berlin, 1928

Menemsha Harbor, 1969

Gay Head Lighthouse, 1967

Kathy Eisenstaedt at Zack's Cliffs, 1960

Sunflowers, 1968

Red Cosmos, 1972

Eldridge's Fish Market, February 1952

Giant Oak Tree, North Tisbury, 1969

Sophia Loren and Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1969