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Trials

May/June 1999 Volume 50, Issue 3

OVERRATED & UNDERRATED

Photographer BY DAVID SCHONAUER Subscribe to American Heritage

Most Overrated Photographer: and get a Free Trial By deﬁnition, to be overrated, you have to be well known to a Issue! wide public. But how many photographers are? Alfred Stieglitz

and Edward Steichen? Ansel Adams and Annie Leibovitz? Herb

Ritts and Helmut Newton? Margaret Bourke-White? Photographs are remembered, but not necessarily the names of the photographers who made them. My choice for most overrated photographer, Life magazine’s Alfred Eisenstaedt, is not only widely known but beloved. Indeed, I choose him not because his photos are without distinction but because the qualities in his work that made him beloved often render his pictures uninteresting.

The short, bespectacled Eisenstaedt, who died in 1995 at the age of ninety-six, came into the crowded cubbyhole of an ofﬁce that was kept for him in the Time and Life Building in New York every day almost until the end of his life. Cheerful, with a reputation for being cheap, he was revered among later generations of photographers for being part of the picture staff (along with Bourke-White, Carl Mydans, Thomas McAvoy, and others) that made Life such a popular and powerful force during the 1940s and 1950s, before television changed everything. Still images have a way of weaving themselves into the fabric of collective memory, and Eisenstaedt’s pictures of marching bands, Marilyn Monroe, and, most famous of all, a sailor and nurse wrapped in V-J Day ecstasy became a part of a particular sunny American identity. But Eisenstaedt was never Life’s most original vision. His photos often border on (or cross over) into cliché. They can even seem self-satisﬁed—illustrations of Life’s, idea of life in America.

It’s ironic that Eisenstaedt’s best photo is not at all upbeat. In fact his 1933 picture of Joseph Goebbels (shot on assignment for the Associated Press) is downright chilling. Hitler’s propaganda minister looks up from a tightly gripped chair with an expression of utter menace. Eisenstaedt, a German Jew who would later have to ﬂee his homeland, had asked Goebbels to smile so as to get a nice portrait, but he snapped early and instead caught something else, something that is not pleasant to see. From a mistake came a revealing portrait.

Most Underrated Photographer: African- American History I have two choices, both of whom died last year: Tazio (2 articles) Secchiaroli and Marcello Geppetti. They were among the packs Architecture, of photographers in Italy in the 1950s who found a startling new Landscape style of shooting celebrities that would change the nature of (6 articles) journalism and the public’s relationship with the rich and Cities, Towns famous. Staking out the cafés along the Via Veneto in Rome, or (16 articles) chasing around on their Vespas, these photographers shot movie Economy stars, businessmen, and royalty (especially royalty) in unguarded (3 articles) and even private moments. It was a far cry from the celebrity Environment, journalism practiced by respected magazines like Life, which Conservation courted movie stars and others. (Eisenstaedt once dressed as (1 article) Veronica Lake to pose with Bob Hope for a Life layout on History, Hollywood.) What those Italian photographers did was not in the Historians least respectful or respected. But their pictures, intimate and (3 articles) crudely real, sold lots of magazines, and they were relatively Immigration, well paid for them. It could be argued that these photos helped American break down the barriers between public and private lives; at the Expansion very least they became potent symbols of that breakdown. (2 articles) Law, Government It’s impossible to talk about the history of the paparazzi without (5 articles) talking about Secchiaroli. He was the inspiration for the Literature celebrity-chasing photographer in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce (3 articles) Vita, a character named Paparazzo (Fellini said it was the name Media of a childhood friend who liked to imitate the sound of buzzing (5 articles) insects). Secchiaroli secured his fame one night in 1958 by Native American shooting the deposed King Farouk of Egypt at a caf» with two History women, neither of whom was his wife. When Farouk took a (5 articles) swing at the photographer, another photographer caught the Other moment. Shots of celebrities in fights, even fights provoked by (10777 articles) photographers, were worth lots of money. Performing Arts (3 articles) Over the years, paparazzi style changed. Close-up confrontation Politics gave way to stakeouts and telephoto lenses. In 1962 Marcello (9 articles) Geppetti made surreptitious pictures of Elizabeth Taylor trysting Popular Culture on a boat with her Cleopatra costar, Richard Burton. At the time, (11 articles) Taylor and Burton were still married to other people, and the Presidents images shocked the world. In the aftermath the fate of the (8 articles) overbudget film and the future of 20th Century-Fox hung in the Science, balance. Meanwhile, Liz and Dick had ascended to a level of jet- Medicine set celebrity that theretofore had been almost unknown. (2 articles) Social History As we now know, there would be many subsequent shocks (18 articles) provided by the paparazzi, shocks that the public usually can’t Sports, get enough of, because the flip side of celebrity adulation is Recreation celebrity envy. We love to see the high and mighty acting just (7 articles) like the rest of us mere mortals. Though they are generally held States in low esteem for their invasive and ill-mannered tactics, (3 articles) especially since the death of the Princess of Wales, I think that Technology, deep in our hearts we know the world would be a lesser place Industry without the paparazzi. Other journalists may pander to celebrities (3 articles) in order to sell magazines and bring high television ratings, but Travel the paparazzi are unfettered. As hired-gun publicists exert more (16 articles) and more control over their rich clients’ public images, these Visual Arts photographers stand watch, day and night. Especially night. (2 articles) — David Schonauer is the editor in chief of American Photo War, Military, magazine. Espionage (17 articles) | Previous | Next | Index | Womens History (2 articles)