Eisenstaedt said that he did not have an opportunity to get the names and details, because he was photographing rapidly changing events during the celebrations. A two-page spread faces a montage of three similar photographs of celebrators in Washington, D.C., Kansas City, and Miami, opposite the Eisenstaedt photograph that was given a full-page display on the right hand side.Įisenstaedt was photographing a spontaneous event that occurred in Times Square during keen public anticipation of the announcement of the end of the war with Japan (that would be made by U.S. The photograph was published a week later in Life magazine, among many photographs of celebrations around the United States that were presented in a 12-page section entitled "Victory Celebrations". Navy sailor embracing and kissing a total stranger -a dental assistant-on Victory over Japan Day ("V-J Day") in New York City's Times Square on August 14, 1945. V-J Day in Times Square is a photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt that portrays a U.S. V-J Day in Times Square, a photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, was published in Life in 1945 with the caption, "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 signing a copy of his famous V-J Day in Times Square photograph during the afternoon of August 23, 1995, while sitting in his Menemsha Inn cabin located on Martha's Vineyard. The exhibition is accompanied by a multi-authored catalogue, winner of the College Art Association’s 2021 Alfred H. “ Life Magazine and the Power of Photography” offers a revealing look at the collaborative processes behind many of Life’s most recognizable, beloved, and controversial images and photo-essays, while incorporating the voices of contemporary artists and their critical reflections on photojournalism. A multimedia installation by Alfredo Jaar, screen prints by Alexandra Bell, and a new commission by Julia Wachtel frame larger conversations for visitors about implicit biases and systemic racism in contemporary media. Interspersed throughout the exhibition, three immersive contemporary “moments” feature works by artists active today who interrogate news media through their practice. Most photographs on view are original working press prints-made to be used in the magazine’s production-and represent the wide range of photographers who worked for Life, such as Margaret Bourke-White, Larry Burrows, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Frank Dandridge, Gordon Parks, and W. Particular attention is given to the women staff members of Life, whose roles remained forgotten or overshadowed by the traditional emphasis on men at the magazine. This focus departs from the historic fascination with the singular photographic genius and instead celebrates the collaborative efforts behind many now-iconic images and stories. Visitors can trace the construction of a Life photo-essay from assignment through to the creative and editorial process of shaping images into a compelling story. Far from simply nostalgic and laudatory, the exhibition critically reconsiders Life’s complex, and sometimes contradictory, approach to such stories through works by photographers from different backgrounds and perspectives who captured difficult images of ethnic discrimination and racialized violence, from the Holocaust to white supremacist terror of the 1960s.ĭrawing on unprecedented access to Life magazine’s picture and paper archives as well as photographers’ archives, the exhibition brings together more than 180 objects, including vintage photographs, contact sheets, assignment outlines, internal memos, and layout experiments. The photographs on view capture some of the defining moments-celebratory and traumatic alike-of the last century, from the Birmingham civil rights demonstrations to the historic Apollo 11 moon landing. This exhibition takes a closer look at the creation and impact of the carefully selected images found in the pages of Life-and the precisely crafted narratives told through these pictures-in order to reveal how the magazine shaped conversations about war, race, technology, national identity, and more in the 20th-century United States. Among them, Life magazine-published weekly from 1936 to 1972-was both wildly popular and visually revolutionary, with photographs arranged in groundbreaking dramatic layouts known as photo-essays. Revealing the stories we don’t know.įrom the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, almost all of the photographs printed for consumption by the American public appeared in illustrated magazines. Conservation and Collections Management.
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