When A Kiss Wasn’t Just A Kiss

It was the fag end of the World War II. August 14, 1945 to be precise. A two-word news flash- ‘Japan Surrenders’ sent people into frolic. Deluge of more than a million people came out at Times Square to celebrate. It was like a block party from 40th to 52nd Streets. Everyone was seen either dancing or hugging.

And then Life magazine’s photographer Alfred Eisentaedt clicked something which became a symbolic picture for years to come. Sharing the anecdote he mentions in the book, ‘Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt,’

“In Times Square on V.J. Day I saw a sailor running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight. Whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn’t make a difference. I was running ahead of him with my Leica looking back over my shoulder but none of the pictures that were possible pleased me. Then suddenly, in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse. If she had been dressed in a dark dress I would never have taken the picture. If the sailor had worn a white uniform, the same. I took exactly four pictures. It was done within a few seconds.”

The ‘V-J Day at Times Square’ is the image that has thrilled the nation and the world as well since then. Though it looks like a simple picture of a sailor kissing a young nurse in white crisp uniform. But what has made the picture memorable is the history that it represents and the intensity that flows out of it.

Art critic Michael Kimmelman wrote in The Times in 1997:

“The most famous photograph of Times Square is surely Alfred Eisenstaedt’s chestnut of the kissing couple, which summed up the national mood in 1945 because it combined all the right elements: the returning soldier, the woman who welcomed him back and Times Square, the crossroads that symbolized home.”

Today, the spot where the couple was captured in the embrace lies on the small island separating Broadway and Seventh Avenue between Toys R Us and MTV studios.

In 2007, the picture was auctioned for 12-thousand dollars at an auction in New York. Ironically, the iconic picture was bought by an anonymous bidder. It was the photographer’s signature on the 1980s silver-resin print that makes the photograph expensive. But it’s the passion that flows out of the kiss, which makes it priceless.