Alfred Eisenstaedt (American, 1898-1995) Joseph Goebbels, Geneva, 1933 Gelatin silver print, printed 1979 9 x 6 inches (22.9 x 15.2 cm); sight (image) Signed in ink, lower margin recto. Titled, dated, and editioned 4/50 in Life Gallery of Photography label, frame verso. LITERATURE: A. Eisenstaedt, Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt: A Self-Portrait, BBC Press, 1985. Taken at the Carlton Hotel in Geneva during the League of Nations conference of 1933, this ominous portrait remains one of the best known images of Goebbels. An accredited journalist, Eisenstaedt was on a routine assignment covering the conference, though unlike other correspondents, he was also Jewish, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the Third Reich's propaganda minister. In his autobiographical book Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt, the photographer recalled this moment, "In 1933, I traveled to Lausanne and Geneva for the fifteenth session of the League of Nations. There, sitting in the hotel garden, was Dr Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda. He smiles, but not at me. He was looking at someone to my left....suddenly he spotted me and I snapped him. His expression changed. Here are the eyes of hate. Was I an enemy? Behind him is his private secretary, Walter Naumann, with the goatee, and Hitler's interpreter, Dr Paul Schmidt. I have been asked how I felt photographing these men. Naturally, not so good, but when I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear". Armed as he was with his camera, Eisenstaedt captured a perfect visual representation of the vitriolic malevolence embodied by the Reich. Goebbels' visceral reaction to the Jewish photographer, his tense body language, and darkened eyes come together to produce a most forbidding figure. Facing this enmity, in an act of commitment and bravery, an attitude that would come to define his career, Eisenstaedt got the shot anyway. In his own words, "When I went up to him...he looked at me with hateful eyes and waited for me to wither. But I didn't wither." HID03101062020 © 2020 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved