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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

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

More quotes by Alfred Eisenstaedt

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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
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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
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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
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The most important thing... is not clicking the shutter... it is clicking with the subject.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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The important thing is not the camera but the eye.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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Retire? Retire from What? Life? I will only retire when I am dead!
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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I want to be a mouse in a mousehole.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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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
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When I photographed Marilyn Monroe, I mixed up my cameras - one had black-and-white film, the other color. I took many pictures. Only two color ones came out all right. My favorite picture of Marilyn hangs always on the wall in my office. It was taken on the little patio of her Hollywood house.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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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
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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
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All photographers have to do, is find and catch the story-telling moment.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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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
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When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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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
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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
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I see pictures all the time. I could stay for hours and watch a raindrop.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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Never boss people around. It's more important to click with people than to click the shutter.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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In a photograph a person’s eyes tell much, sometimes they tell all.
Alfred Eisenstaedt
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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