Alfred Eisenstaedt
dal 27/6/2007 al 31/7/2007
Segnalato da
27/6/2007
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Michael Hoppen, London
Vintage photographs
Vintage photographs
"It's more important to click with people than click the shutter"
We are delighted to announce an exhibition of vintage photographs by
Alfred Eisenstaedt - "the father of photojournalism". In a photographic
career spanning sixty years Eisenstaedt was the first photographer to
consistently practice candid photography, and in his own words,
"photographed more people than any other photographer." His photographs
have featured on the front cover of LIFE magazine 92 times and he
travelled the world on more than 2500 assignments. Most importantly, his
photographs are a testimony to seminal events and key people who in turn
shaped the contemporary world.
Born in 1898 in West Prussia, Alfred Eisenstaedt was given his first
camera at the age of 14 and sold his first photograph in 1927 to the
newspaper Der Weltspiegel at a time when photojournalism was at its very
infancy. Narrowly escaping the Holocaust in Europe Eisenstaedt emigrated
to the United States. He was soon hired along with three other
photographers, Margaret Bourke-White, Thomas McAvoy and Peter Stackpole by
Time founder Henry Luce, for a secret start-up known only as "Project X."
After six months of testing the mystery venture, it premiered as LIFE
magazine on November 23, 1936.
Over his career Eisenstaedt photographed a diverse range of subjects
ranging from the first meeting between Hitler and Mussolini, the aftermath
of the Hiroshima bomb, and post depression America, to portraits of John F
Kennedy, Albert Einstein, and Marilyn Monroe, to enduring photographs of
ordinary people across America and Europe. Eisenstaedt's most famous image
VJ Day (a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, pictured on the front of
this release) is known to millions of people across the world, although
few could name the man who took this iconic photograph in 1945. As diverse
and disparate as Eisenstaedt's photographs are all of these images are
unified by Eisenstaedt's continually fresh eye and talent for capturing
pivotal moments in the human experience.
Up until his death in 1995, Eisenstaedt was still shooting and adding to
his inventory of over 100,000 negatives in his personal office at LIFE
magazine. The son of a merchant, he was drafted into the German army aged
17 and not destined to be a photographer. The only survivor of an
offensive just one year later he was sent home with shrapnel through both
of his legs. His time in recovery reawakened his youthful interest in
photography that did not wane until his death at the age of 96.
Eisenstaedt's first major retrospective exhibition did not come until age
88 when the International Center of Photography in New York presented 125
of his prints. Since then he has been granted many awards - including the
Presidential Medal of Arts bestowed by President Bush, and the ICP Master
of Photography award in 1988.
Michael Hoppen Contemporary
3 Jubilee Place - London
Hours: Tues-Fri 12noon - 6 pm . Sat 10:30am - 4pm
Admission free