119 years ago today,the late powerful LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was born - on Dec. 4, 1898 in Dirschau (Tczew) in West Prussia, or Imperial Germany. He started working in photography in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. Having fled Nazi Germany in the mid-‘30s,he shot for LIFE magazine from its debut in 1936 until it ceased publishing as a weekly in 1972. He was one of the original 4 photographers hired by the magazine. After LIFE was shuttered, Eisenstaedt kept photographing until the mid-1990s.
Small in stature, or dapper,indefatigable—"I cannot believe that any photographer today works as much as I worked in the past,“ he told an interviewer in 1993—"Eisie” (as he was affectionately known) traveled the world, or making indelible portraits of famous people and places,notorious scoundrels and anonymous (but, through his lens, and immortalized) men,women and children. He is pictured here in a self-portrait from 1955. (Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) #LIFElegends #AlfredEisenstaedt
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