PHOTOBOOK 🙃 SUNDAY

The book was first published in 1966. It has been reprinted a number of times since and is fairly easy to find in good used condition. It is a record like few others by a photographer who made a difference. The print quality is a little iffy, depending on which edition you get, but the photographs are important. They are among the best of the hundreds of thousands of negatives Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898 - 1995) made during his long career.

Alfred Eisenstaedt is responsible for some of the most iconic photographs of the middle decades of the 20th century. On a technicality, it can be argued that Eisenstaedt actually is a 19th century photographer, born in 1898, two years before the turn of the century. He died nearly a century later in 1995. Yet another example of why it pays to be a photographer… they seem to live a very long time! Eisenstaedt photographed from the age of 27 through to the beginning of the 1990s. He made photographs in each of eight decades of the 20th century!

Despite the print quality of some of these editions, Witness to Our Time is most definitely worthy of having on your shelf. I am particularly drawn to how he seems to have made really good portraits of some of the greatest and most important people across the arts and politics, but I would not consider him a portrait photographer, like Karsh, for instance. Eisenstaedt was one of the first photographers to abandon the tripod, lights, flash, and all the other extras. He worked hand-held with available light, when the first serious handheld Leica was only a couple of years old. This is of course aside from the many amazing images of everyday and special events, which populated his more than 2500 stories for Life Magazine.

The photographs in the book are some of the most recognisable photographs of the 20th century. Everyone knows the 1945 kiss at Times Square. Not many know who made the photograph. And you can say the same for many of these images.

Check out this book, as I said, not fantastic reproductions in the early editions, but it is an amazing collection. My copy is from 1980, and is quite good!

Title: Witness to Our Time

Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

Publisher: ‎ Studio

Year: 1966

All photographs below are by Alfred Eisenstaedt. The first one tells you just how far you sometimes have to go to get the shot. This is from the mid-air repairs being made to the Graf Zeppelin on its way across the Atlantic in 1934. Not may photographers can say they have stood on top of a Zeppelin in mid-flight. The final three portraits are from 1949, 1951 and 1953 respectively.