Alfred Eisenstaedt

He met Kathy Kaye, a South African woman, and married her in 1949. The couple had no children and remained together till Kathy’s death in 1972. At the time of their marriage, even Kathy was surprised by the famous photographer’s simplicity!

In spite of all his achievements and success, he was known to his friends as a simple and unassuming person.

After living a long and productive life, he died in 1995 at the ripe old age of 96.

He was born in West Prussia, Imperial Germany, on 6 December 1898 as the son of Joseph and Regina Schoen Eisenstaedt. His father owned a department store.

He was a creative child and took a fascination to photography early on in his life. He received his first camera when he was 14—it was an Eastman Kodak Folding Camera with roll film—and he was hooked to this art form.

He studied at the Hohenzollern Gymnasium in Berlin.

He served in the German Army from 1916 to 1918 during the World War I and was wounded in both the legs. After the war he began working as a belt and button salesman during the 1920s.

During the 1920s he also began exploring his interest in photography in earnest and started working as a freelance photographer for the Pacific and Atlantic Photos’ Berlin office in 1928. He was greatly influenced by the works of the pioneering documentary photographer Erich Salomon.

He became a full-time photographer in 1929. He was very skilled in the use of the 35-mm Leica camera and created many works in this format which went on to achieve widespread popularity. One of his major projects during the 1930s was covering the rise of Adolf Hitler.

In 1932, he clicked an image of a waiter at the ice rink of the Grand Hotel. This image became very famous for the perfect timing of the shot which he had so painstakingly planned and executed.

He was very well-known for capturing the poignancy of the moment in his photographs. Once on a trip to the opera house La Scala, Milan, in 1934, he saw a young society girl sitting next to an empty box. He took a photograph of the girl from the box which resulted in yet another one of his memorable images.

He is most famous for clicking the photograph known as ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ which shows an American sailor kissing a young woman on 14 August, 1945—Victory over Japan Day—in Times Square. This image became an icon representing the jubilation felt by the Americans at the end of the World War II.