The famous kiss in Times Square turns 80. Learn the story behind this iconic photo.

Born in Tczew, Alfred Eisenstaedt is today considered the father of photojournalism. He grew up in Berlin and emigrated to the United States in 1935, where he became a photographer for Life magazine a year later.

His portfolio includes thousands of photos, from portraits of famous people – Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt – to numerous photo essays, of which he is considered a pioneer.

However, the photo that brought him the greatest fame is the one showing an accidental kiss between two strangers, captured in Times Square.

The Story of the Times Square Kiss Photo

On August 14, 1945, Eisenstaedt, like many Americans, took to the streets after Radio Tokyo broadcast Emperor Hirohito's announcement. Japan's surrender heralded the end of World War II. The streets of New York were filling with crowds celebrating, and among them, the photographer strolled with his Leica.

He was given a simple task by the editors of "Life" to immortalize these moments of joy in photographs. But, as he later admitted, it was chance that decided that day that he captured perhaps the most important, and certainly the most recognizable, image of his career. The subjects of the photograph are a sailor and a dental assistant.

"I was lucky because the man in this photo was walking through Times Square grabbing every girl he saw, whether it was a grandmother or a teenager," the photographer recalled in an interview with the BBC, admitting that none of the shots were quite right for him. "Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, I saw someone grabbing something white. I turned and snapped the photo just as the sailor was kissing the nurse. If she had been wearing a dark dress, I would never have taken that picture. If the sailor had been wearing a white uniform, the same thing," he recounted.

In a matter of seconds, he managed to snap four photos, one of which ended up on the magazine's cover. Chance, keen observation, reflexes, and careful composition allowed him to capture this historic moment in the most eloquent way.

Eisenstaedt wasn't the only one whose lens was trained on the couple. U.S. Navy documentary filmmaker Victor Jorgensen also took a photograph with a slightly different perspective. The photograph, titled "Kissing the War Goodbye," was published by The New York Times, but it's Eisenstaedt's photo that is most often cited.

- People keep telling me that when I'm gone from this world, when I'm in heaven, they'll remember this photo - he admitted in an interview with the BBC.

He was right when he said: "Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you capture on film is immortalized forever... it remembers the little things, long after you have forgotten everything." The author of these words died in 1995.

Who are the heroes of the Times Square kiss photo?

Who are the subjects of this memorable photo? Unraveling this mystery took decades and remains a mystery. None of the photographers recorded the subjects' identities, and their faces are invisible in the photo. Consequently, there are many inconsistencies regarding the subjects' identities, as many people claimed to have been photographed. It is believed that the woman in the photo is Greta Zimmer (married name Friedman) , who tried to contact the magazine's editors as early as the 1960s.

"I didn't see him coming, and before I knew it, I was in this hug. It wasn't my choice to let him kiss me. The guy just walked up to me and grabbed me. This man was very strong. I wasn't kissing him. He was kissing me," she recalled in a 2012 interview with CBS News.

Edith Shain also posed as the nurse in the photo, and, as the Los Angeles Times describes, immediately recognized herself in the photo. However, for years she felt too self-conscious about the moment, which was immortalized forever in the photograph. It wasn't until 1980 that Shain, desiring a copy of the famous photo, wrote to Life magazine. According to The Times, Eisenstaedt himself flew to meet her and gave her a copy of the photo.

"You can imagine how people felt. They were just thrilled," Shain recalled about V-0 Day in an interview with The Times in 2005. "Someone grabbed me and kissed me, and I let him because he was fighting for his country. I closed my eyes when I kissed him. I'd never seen him again," she added.

It's also difficult to determine who kissed him. In this case, too, there were plenty of those who claimed to be the sailor in the photo. In 1987, George Mendonsa filed a later withdrawn lawsuit against the publisher of Life magazine for unauthorized use of his image, claiming he was the man in the photo. In 2005, a team of researchers working with the Naval War College confirmed that Mendonsa was indeed the sailor in the photo, based on comparative analysis of scars and tattoos.

It could also have been Carl Muscarello . "Everything points to him," Shain told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in 1995, though she wasn't sure.

Bobbi Baker Burrows , editor of Life magazine, was also unsure about the identity of the people in the photo. In an interview with the AP, she recalled that when interest in the photo resurfaced, the magazine published an article in which it reached out to those who might be in the photo.

"We received claims from several nurses and dozens of sailors, but we were never able to prove that any of them were those specific individuals, and Eisenstaedt himself simply said he didn't know," she explained.

Despite these doubts, during the 60th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day in 2005, it was Shain and Muscarello who appeared together in Times Square, where they exchanged kisses in the presence of photographers and a large crowd.

The kiss scene proved so iconic that it earned its own sculpture by John Seward Johnson. However, contemporary culture has given it a somewhat different resonance. In 2019, the sculpture, located in Sarasota, Florida, was vandalized. The words "MeToo" were spray-painted in red on the woman's leg, a reference to the grassroots movement raising awareness of sexual harassment against women.