Alfred Eisenstaedt, Untitled, 1933. Vintage gelatin silver print, 9 x 6.5 inches (22.9 x 16.5 cm). Stamped.

Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898 – 1995) was an American photographer of German birth. Called "the father of photojournalism," Eisenstaedt perfected certain techniques for capturing the spontaneous moment that has given us some of our most enduring photographic images. He attended Berlin University from 1913 to 1916 and served in the army (1916-18). He was a self-taught photographer, though a friend taught him enlargement techniques in 1926. In 1927 he began to work for the Berliner Tageblatt, which led him to photograph in smaller format; he was soon also acting as a freelance photographer for the Weltspiegel, producing work for the Pacific and Atlantic Picture Agency, Associated Press and the Berliner illustrierte Zeitung from 1929 until 1935. He photographed Marlene Dietrich in Berlin in 1928, while she was filming Der blaue Engel, and this picture of a woman in a man's black smoking jacket became one of Eisenstaedt's most famous photographs together with his picture of an American sailor kissing a young woman on V-J Day in Times Square in 1945. Eisenstaedt emigrated to the United States in 1935. He worked as a photographer for Life magazine from 1936 to 1972. During his lifetime, Eisenstaedt published several books. His first, Witness to our Time, appeared in 1966. Some of the other books that followed were: The Eye of Eisenstaedt, in 1969; Martha's Vineyard, in 1970; and Witness to Nature, in 1971. With John McPhee's text his photographs were published in 1972 in Wimbledon: A Celebration. Eisenstaedt died at his tiny cottage in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts at the age of 96. The legacy he left behind was not a complicated one—simply stacks and stacks of pictures for people of the next generations to look at. His view of the world was a pretty view. And Eisenstaedt chronicled all of the decades of the 20th Century in snapping its most cherished memories. [Art Encyclopedia]