He Is a Camera : Legendary Alfred Eisenstaedt Opens Show of His Photographs

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Marilyn purrs, her eyes in a sexy daze.

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Hitler shakes Mussolini’s hand in 1934, staring with a knowing look into the Italian dictator’s eyes.

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This time Alfred Eisenstaedt, 92, is on the other side of the camera.

Small and humble, wearing tennis shoes and bow tie, the legendary photographer finds himself the object of press curiousity and fan adoration as he tours the nation with his beloved black-and-white prints--photographs he calls “stories.” And that they are.

At the Circle Gallery in Beverly Hills, where the Life magazine photographer was on hand Tuesday to kick off an exhibition and sale of his work (through Nov. 13), he talked about Marilyn Monroe, Adolf Hitler and countless others who became part of the million-odd “stories” that he captured with a basic camera.

Monroe was an accident. Eisenstaedt actually came to Hollywood in 1953 on another Life assignment. But when his request to photograph her was approved, he immediately rushed to snap her in a pose that became the quintessential Marilyn image.

Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Venice, likewise, was not a planned shot. It started in 1934 as a news-schmooze assignment to capture the first meeting between the two freshmen heads of state, but history would later emblazon the telling image.

Eisenstaedt would have people believe that his just-at-the-right-moment pictures were just pure luck. “I’m sure if another photographer would have been (at the Hitler-Mussolini meeting) he would have done the same thing,” Eisenstaedt said.

But lately, as critics re-evaluate his work in the context of new photographic philosophies, Eisenstaedt has come under fire for taking those perfect portraits in a vacuum.

“He simplifies . . . ,” said Sally A. Stein, an art history professor at UC Irvine. “Life to him became big, clear, punchy shots. He later became a personality portraitist.”

Added Stephen K. Lehmer, a UCLA Extension photography teacher: “A lot of his work was dealing with the strength of image without a lot of background about the social or political climate in which the work was produced.”

Eisenstaedt, a German immigrant who helped found photojournalism with fellow countrymen in the 1920s and ‘30s before landing a job at Life in 1936, defends his work as casual art that is neither posed nor vacuous.

Taking pictures that celebrate life, he explained, is his style. “I take pictures of people only in happy moods. I only show their bright side.” The result is Marilyn’s gaze, Bette Davis’ glow and Clark Gable’s GQ-esque repose.

But Ernest Hemingway was another story. In Havana to shoot the author in 1936, Eisenstaedt almost ended up being shot himself. He had commissioned a vessel to follow Hemingway’s speedboat. Hemingway warned Eisenstaedt, who had been photographing the author fishing off the Cuban coast, to keep his distance.

Later in the day, during a cocktail party at sea, Hemingway complained to Eisenstaedt that the photographer had come too close to the boat. That’s why, Hemingway said, he had fired at him. Eisenstaedt told Hemingway he didn’t believe that the author would do such a thing.

Hearing this, “Hemingway dropped his glass--his mouth foamed--and he held me over the rail of the boat,” Eisenstaedt said. “He wanted to drown me.”

The incident was fallout from Eisenstaedt’s endeavor to always be in the right place at the right time, whether snapping pictures of Hemingway at sea or photographing a World War II victory celebration in Times Square.

His most famous photo captured a sailor kissing a woman on V-J Day in the New York City square: “This man grabbed every woman he saw,” Eisenstaedt said. “So I ran ahead of him and I snapped him.” Actually, Eisenstaedt said, he waited until the sailor grabbed the right woman--a woman wearing a white dress that would contrast perfectly with the photograph’s dark background.

Eisenstaedt still keeps an office at Life, though arthritis has prevented him from much photographic work. “I’m not going to retire,” he said. “I’ll only retire when I’m dead.”