![]() "Without the swans, there is no picture." Eisenstaedt waited more than an hour until the swans got close enough. Four white swans languished way off in the distance. On Cape Cod, there were old headstones in front of a black pond. "He looked at me for 1,000th of a second _ and I got it." Eisenstaedt waited, aimed, waited, then said, "Tojo! Look at me!" Four months after Hiroshima, Eisenstaedt went to Japan. ![]() Hideki Tojo, wearing a cap, glasses and ordinary coat. He believes in using little film and lots of patience, and he has much to show for it up on the screen. The philosophy stems from slow film-speed days, but even in 1992, Eisenstaedt makes no apologies. Eisenstaedt has a reputation for thinking in one-frame terms. "Only one picture."Įisenstaedt often says these words in his dry-witted narration, which he delivers without notes. So I put a chair there." The waiter slowed. "I was very much intrigued by the way he served drinks." Eisie, as he is called, wanted to photograph the waiter. He was at an outdoor restaurant when he saw this waiter. He was sent by the Associated Press to photograph "the elegant life" in Europe. A simple folding chair stands to his right. Next is a waiter on ice skates, leg extended, hoisting a tray carrying aperitifs. "It was not fashionable at the time for women to wear tuxedos." He wrote to her later, he adds. "She has just finished The Blue Angel," Eisenstaedt narrates in a thickly accented voice. Marlene Dietrich at the height of her career in 1928. He fiddles with the small remote control in his hand, presses a button. He sits gratefully back in his chair, placed to the right of a large screen. The applause washes over Eisenstaedt, then recedes. He did this with just one commandment, really: He refused to pose his subjects. Eisenstaedt has worked there longer than most people stay married: 50 years.Īrmed with little more than a Leica 35mm camera, imagination and, he always repeats, patience, he changed the face of news photography. ![]() He came to America in 1935 when a man named Henry Luce started a project labeled "X." Project X became Life magazine. He fought for Germany, the same country he left amid troubling persecution 20 years later. He fought and was injured in a war fought too long ago for many to think about: World War I. He was born in a country that no longer exists. Just these basics give pause for thought. But Borkowski first catalogs Eisenstaedt's history. He is about to begin a slide presentation of his photographs. That in fact is much of what he does in the twilight of his career _ receive honors and awards, open exhibitions, tell war stories. Eisenstaedt came to Tampa to receive at USF's commencement an honorary degree, doctor of humane letters, and to open an exhibition of his work at the USF Contemporary Art Museum that runs through June 12. He has just been introduced by Frank Borkowski, president of the University of South Florida, to an adoring, expectant audience of perhaps 400 at Theater I. He is Alfred Eisenstaedt, 93, Life magazine's first and most famous photographer and, quite simply, an icon in photojournalism.
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