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Alfred Eisenstaedt, Premiere at La Scala, Milan, 1933
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People often don’t take me seriously because I have so little equipment.
Master Photographers is a 1983 series from the BBC profiling six photographers: Alfred Eisenstaedt, Bill Brandt, Andreas Feininger, Jacques Henri Lartique, Andre Kertesz, Ansel Adams. The series format has the subject in his studio or office with a stack of preselected printed images. The interviewer (not identified in the credits) asks questions from time to time, but otherwise the subject discusses the photos he has prepared.
The Eisenstaedt episode features “the father of photojournalism,” a German Jew who emigrated to the United States in the 1930’s and whose images for Life magazine (90 of them featured on covers) have become visual icons of the twentieth century. Eisenstaedt seems to have never taken himself too seriously. He always traveled light. His new wife asked where he kept his “real” cameras, assuming that a professional would have several oversize cameras. In fact he carried the equivalent of the point-and-shoot, which he found useful in capturing news. He recommends shooting as much as possible with natural light. If you use artificial light, he says, you lose the mood. He notes that in the early days not much was known about photojournalism, that the photographers and editors made it up as they went along, that pay was poor and every day was something of an adventure. He remembers when he started for Life, the second year of the magazine, the editors gave him only a topic or subject. Everything else was up the photographer. On the qualities of a good photographer, he recommends unobtrusiveness, carrying as little equipment as possible, and identifying oneself to subjects as an amateur.This series is available at times via web-based video services such as Youtube, or as a torrent.
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