Quote

Yes, I sold buttons to earn living. But I took pictures to keep on living. Pictures are my life – as necessary as eating or breathing.

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alfred Eisenstaedt
Age: 96 †
Born: 1898
Born: December 6
Died: 1995
Died: August 24
Journalist
Photographer
Photojournalist
Dirschau
Eisie
Alfred Eisenstadt
Living
Earn
Keep
Breathing
Life
Pictures
Photographer
Photography
Eating
Necessary
Buttons
Took
Sold

More quotes by Alfred Eisenstaedt

Image
People will never understand the patience a photographer requires to make a great photograph, all they see is the end result. I can stand in front of a leaf with a dew drop, or a rain drop, and stay there for ages just waiting for the right moment. Sure, people think I'm crazy, but who cares? I see more than they do!
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
I enjoy traveling and recording far-away places and people with my camera. But I also find it wonderfully rewarding to see what I can discover outside my own window. You only need to study the scene with the eyes of a photographer.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
Photographers don't need to be aggressive. Some are. Henry Benson is aggressive - but then he's from Fleet Street. If you can talk to people, you don't need to push people around.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
I will be remembered when I'm in heaven. People won't remember my name, but they will know the photographer who did that picture of that nurse being kissed by the sailor at the end of World War II. Everybody remembers that.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
It's important to understand it's OK to control the subject. If most editorial stories were photographed just as they are, editors would end up throwing most in the waste basket. You have to work hard at making an editorial picture. You need to re-stage things, rearrange things so that they work for the story, with truth and without lying.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
I see pictures all the time. I could stay for hours and watch a raindrop.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
I have to be as much diplomat as a photographer.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
I seldom think when I take a picture. My eyes and fingers react - click. But first, it's most important to decide on the angle at which your photograph is to be taken.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
In New York’s Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
Another picture I hope to be remembered by is this one of the drum major rehearsing at the University of Michigan. It was early in this morning, and I saw a little boy running after him, all the faculty children in the playing field ran after the boy, and I ran after them. This is a completely spontaneous, unstaged picture.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
In a photograph a person’s eyes tell much, sometimes they tell all.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
I always prefer photographing in available light – or Rembrandt-light I like to call it – so you get the natural modulations of the face. It makes a more alive, real, and flattering portrait.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
The important thing is not the camera but the eye.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
I want to be a mouse in a mousehole.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
I don't like to work with assistants. I'm already one too many the camera alone would be enough.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Image
The most important thing... is not clicking the shutter... it is clicking with the subject.
Alfred Eisenstaedt