ALFRED EISENSTAEDT, VJ day

Early gelatin silver press print (printed 1973) Cm 25 x 20Extensively annotated, dated and stamped Life Magazine on verso Framed (dark blunt wood with plexi) size cm 59 x 49 x 1 Original provenance: Agenzia Masi, Milano ItalyI reconcile myself to life.Today, thirty years after the invention of the Internet, when everybody is sailing the virtual seas of the world, clicking and following life via the computer (Tomorrow this could all be happening on the cellphone display) today - I was saying - Eisenstaedt’s most famous photograph, the one of the kiss in Times Square, still gives us that wonderful sense of sexuality, the joy of simple emotions and light after the tragic destruction of the war. He really had navigated the seas of the Pacific, lived through the deaths of thousands of his military comrades, slept with fear, and, using the then available technology, had spied on the enemy’s moves. He had survived, now burst into the tumult of the streets of New York which was celebrating Victory and kissed everyone of them. Overcome with the sheer joy and sensuality of it, he just did it. To everyone’s delight and approval. And “She”, the subject and object of life which was starting over, didn’t raise the least resistance because she knew how the sailor’s love legend always went. It could have been a scene out of a Frank Sinatra film but it was just a moment out of life that a great artist fixed on film without the help of lights, computers or assistants. If life is the art of meeting then photography is the art of catching life and Alfred Eisenstaedt was its great songster. Leafing through his pictures is like sailing over the marvellous fickleness life offers us.Internet - You must be joking!G. Alberto Orefice© 2000 Photology Editions 100 to 2000 the century of Photoart