Alfred Eisenstaedt

Alfred Eisenstaedt is a German American photographer and photojournalist who is famous for his candid photographs. I chose to talk about Eisenstaedt because candid photographs are fun to look at and involve real people and real photographs. Also, I think he teaches the importance of having your photos be candid. Candid photographs are mostly taken in a split second shot. So the angle or the lighting may never be quite right. Eisenstaedt shows a great example of skills in his candid.

On this page is his most famous photograph of an American Sailor on V-d day. As the story goes, this sailor was running through the streets of New York with excitement, kissing every girl he saw. Eisenstaedt was aware and looking around so that he was ready to get this perfect shot seen here. Part of the fun and excitement in this photography is capturing your human subjects off guard so that your pictures have more natural emotion or expression. Subjects are not aware of your existence and not paying attention.

Eisenstaedt took photos of famous Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In a way, he was the Albert Einstein of Photography because he was of Jewish descent, lived in Berlin and emigrated to the United States in 1935 because of Hitler’s oppression where he became very successful.

The thing I admire most about Eisenstaedt's work is that he keeps everything simple. In fact, right before he died in 1995, he said his motto for everything was to "keep it simple." His love for the use of a camera, and the way he was able to capture pure expressions on people's faces turns the photograph into a high simplistic value. The photographer, skilled professional that he was, "always behaved like an amateur with little equipment." There is always the most spontaneous moments to enjoy as a perennial visual delight in his photographs.