Alfred Eisenstaedt

Born in Germany on December 6^th, 1898, Alfred Eisenstaedt was a famous photographer who captured the famous image of the Times Square celebration of V-J Day. His family moved to Italy in 1906. Up until being wounded in 1918, Eisenstaedt served in the German army during the first World War. During his civilian life as a belt and button salesman, Eisenstaedt began taking freelance photos for the Berliner Tageblatt. Before emigrating to the United States in 1935, he had photographed a waiter ice skating, Hitler and Mussolini meeting in Italy, and Joseph Goebbels at the League of Nations. In the US, Eisenstaedt made his permanent residence in Queens, New York, making his living as a photographer for Life Magazine from 1936 to 1972. He photographed news stories and celebrities including Ernest Hemmingway and Sophia Loren, and his photos appeared on 90 of Life’s covers.

For 50 years Eisenstaedt would vacation in Martha’s Vineyard during the summer, even returning early from a trip to the Galapagos Islands so that he could keep his standing reservation in Menemsha. Frequently taking pictures of the Vineyard’s lighthouses in natural light, he liked to experiment with different lenses, filters, and prisms. He would frequently be part of fundraisers for the leaseholders of the lighthouses, the Vineyard Environmental Research Institute, with one such fundraiser being named in his honor. In 1989, he was awarded the Nation Medal of the Arts. Eisenstaedt’s final photographs were of Bill Clinton and his family in 1993 at the Granary Gallery of West Tisdale on Martha’s Vineyard. On August 24^th, 1995, he died in his sleep at midnight. Attending his funeral were his close friend, the publisher/author William E. Marks, and his sister-in-law.