Photographer Eisenstaedt, Who Captured The Kiss, Dies

Alfred Eisenstaedt, a pioneer of modern photojournalism whose camera recorded many of the historic photographs of World War II including that of a sailor kissing a nurse in New York’s Times Square to celebrate V-J Day, has died. He was 96.

Eisenstaedt, who lived in New York City, died late Wednesday of cardiac arrest while vacationing in Massachusetts.

One of Life magazine’s first four photographers, Eisenstaedt pioneered the use of natural light and informal poses in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and continued as a working photographer almost to his death.

There were tens of thousands of “Eisie” pictures published around the world over the course of a career that spanned more than six decades. He may have been the most widely published photographer in history.

His work included classic portraits of Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe.

He was born Dec. 6, 1898, in Dirschau, Germany, now a part of Poland, and raised in Berlin, the son of a prosperous department store owner.