German photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt whose pioneering images for Life magazine shaped American photojournalism, died on August 24, 1995. He was 96.

He is best known for his photograph of a sailor and nurse kissing in Times Square during a V-J Day celebration. His photography was candid and often made with a 35mm Leica M3 rangefinder camera.

Eisenstaedt was born into a Jewish family in Dirschau (Tczew) in West Prussia, Imperial Germany. His family moved to Berlin in 1906. Eisenstaedt served in the German Army's artillery during World War I, where he was wounded.

Eisenstaedt began taking photographs in the 1920s as a freelancer for the Berliner Tageblatt, while working as a belt and button salesman in Weimar, Germany.

He became successful enough in photography to take it on full-time in 1929. Four years later he photographed a meeting between Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Italy. Other notable pictures taken by Eisenstaedt in his early career include a waiter ice skating in St. Moritz in 1932 and Joseph Goebbels at the League of Nations in Geneva in 1933.

Because of oppression in Hitler's Nazi Germany, Eisenstaedt emigrated to the United States in 1935, where he lived in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York, for the rest of his life. He worked as a photographer for Life magazine from 1936 to 1972. His photos of news events and celebrities, such as Sophia Loren and Ernest Hemingway, appeared on more than 90 Life covers.

He received many awards and honors, including the Presidential Medal of Arts and the Infinity Master of Photography Award, given by the International Center of Photography. In 1951 he was named "Photographer of the Year" by the Encyclopedia Britannica and the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

He worked until shortly before his death. Some of his last photographs were made of the Clinton family in 1993.