One of the fathers of photojournalism.

Click the image for Amazon.
I get no click-through award if you do that.

In 1947 four of the great photojournalists in Europe created Magnum Photos. They were Robert Capa, David “Chim” Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger. But America’s LIFE magazine, recreated as a photo weekly, had been in the photojournalism business since 1936. Its first cover was by Margaret Bourke-White. Alfred Eisenstaedt followed one week later. By the conclusion of his career he had 90 LIFE covers under his belt. Eisenstaedt had had the foresight to leave his native Germany for New York in 1936 before the German killing machine could get at him and his family. Indeed, the apocryphal story has it that it was learning of Elsie’s ethnicity that put the scowl on Goebbels’s face in the famous image below.

Eisie was a lifelong devotee of the Leica camera, maintaining that its inconspicuous appearance – in contrast to the large plate cameras favored by many of his contemporaries – helped put his subjects at ease. Well, maybe not Goebbels.

This book is a marvelous collection of his finest images. Whereas HC-B specialized in composition of his many street pictures, Eisie was much more the journeyman snapper who could always be relied on to get the job done. Unlike HC-B he was also a fine portraitist, as these images show:

GBS

Goebbels – evil personified

Oppie

La Hepburn

WSC in 1951. A lovely, warm portrait.

Eisie also had a fine sense of humor:

Miami Beach on a cold day

If you like great portraiture and great photojournalism, this book belongs in your library.

Note: These high quality scans of the images in the book were made using the fine scanner in the Epson ET-8550 printer.