EISENSTAEDT Alfred
Date of birth : December 6, 1898, Dierschau (Tczew), Poland.
Date of death : August 24, 1995, Martha's Vineyard (,).
* 7215 37th avenue, Jackson Heights, Queens
* Menemsha, Martha's Vineyard.
Story
His parents, Joseph (1870- died before 1938) and Regina (1876-August 29, 1947, New York)(,
), Jews, had moved from Prussia to Berlin in 1906 ().
He made his first pictures aged 13 with a Kodak offered to him.
The publication in Weltspiegel magazine of his picture of a tennisplayer woman () marked the beginning of his activity as a free-lance photographer, notably for the Berliner Tageblatt.
In 1929, he decided to make photography his job and worked then for the "Pacific
and Atlantic Picture Agency".
His first order, a photo reporting about the Nobel prizegiving to Thomas Mann in 1929, already gave him a great
In those years, he made many portraits which later became famous, as those of Marlene Dietrich (,
), Albert Einstein (), George Bernard Shaw (,,
), but also Joseph Goebbels (), Hitler and Mussolini (,
,), and also a reporting about the war between Italy and Ethiopia.
The political situation of Germany and the hope of better work conditons led him to emigrate to the USA in 1935, where he first worked for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Town and Country magazines.
He arrived in New York City on the "Ile de France" from Le Havre (France), on November 27, 1935anonymous people in everyday life situations ;;,
He received many international prizes and belongs among the most published photographers in the world.
Link with
Marilyn
"Eisie" as he was called, took Marilyn in pictures in May 1953, for Life magazine, in the patio of her apartment of
Doheny Drive.
Portrait of Marilyn
Full body
In her apartment
With Alfred Eisenstaedt
Bibliography
"Eisenstaedt's Album". New York : Viking, 1976.
Website