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It was August 14, 1945 when President Truman announced on the radio the unconditional surrender of Japan and therefore, the end of World War II. As the President's voice articulated those notes that many had longed to hear, an imaginary faucet opened on Times Square releasing thousands of people for the deserved celebrations.
Alfred Eisenstaedt, a Prussian Jew who grew up in Germany and fled to the United States during the Hitlerian repressions, was on 45th Street, steps away from Broadway, to capture images of the event for the magazine "Life" for which he worked. As people filled every square inch of that brightly lit corner of New York with beaming smiles, upon raising his Leica M3 that had been dangling on his chest, he saw a sailor approaching with exuberance, targeting a nurse who had come out onto the street to join the vibrant calls of the jubilant crowd.
The sailor, overwhelmed with irrepressible joy, seized her with vigor, wrapping her in romantic coils. Like a chess move dictated by the sensual laws of tango, the sailor improvised a particular dip, and dominated her lips with a kiss, legitimate, liberating, almost a bite. But pleasant. The nurse seemed not to comprehend the moment but was filled with joy. Instead of resisting the navigator's sweet fury, she surrendered, concerned, with a purity now vanished, about holding down her skirt that might blow up.
Beautiful is the color contrast triggered by that spontaneous encounter. The white of the nurse, like the purity of a dove that, never as this time, marries the black, rough, energetic, of a wolf (of the sea) that grabs its prey with fascinating violence, with the most beautiful violence. That of a thunderous embrace that spreads its electric charge in a passionate kiss. The war is over, darling! I want to shout it to the whole world with a kiss! The people approve, smile, and perhaps applaud.
Eisenstaedt would later affirm several times that what drove him to shoot was precisely that color contrast. A brilliant black and white that stands out against the black and white. So much so it seems pasted onto any anonymous background of Times Square. Victor Jorgensen, a U.S. Navy photographer on the scene that day, shot from a different angle, giving us a different yet significant glimpse.
I'm sorry to have to include, for coherence, the sore note. Unfortunately, the Americans managed to ruin this emblematic photo, letting the bad taste side prevail with a pathetic scene worthy of the worst gossip rag. The claim of the protagonists.
Much like the soldiers with the flag raised at Iwo Jima, for decades various conjectures emerged, even casting a bad light on the photographer. The nurse was said to be Edith Shain, who recently passed away, associating herself with the woman in the photo with a letter sent to Eisenstaedt and published in "Life" even in 1970. Ten years later, the magazine published an article highlighting the still-unresolved question of who the sailor was. No less than eleven candidates emerged and even three more nurses intent on dethroning Shain. Needless to say, in their eagerness for Warholian notoriety, the team of sailors reported several recognition attempts, even the most abject ones. From tattoos to scars, from legal battles with photographic expertise to anthropometric data sifted through (!). But also false testimonies and attempts to sue the magazine for publishing it without permission. Yes, after 35 years.
Then, to deliver the fatal blow, descending into macabre vulgarity, in 1996 (Eisenstaedt died in '95), a certain Jim Reynolds emerged asserting even the fallacy of the famous shot. Reynolds claimed that the capture dated back two months earlier and that the photographer asked the subjects to pose. He even declared that to not undermine his marital integrity, he found himself forced to reveal the truth after his wife's death, as the photo would have depicted him in evident adultery. The only certainty is that the author of the photo always maintained he could not identify the subjects of the famous shot due to the chaos of the moment.
Apparently, Edith Shain would have recognized as her fleeting partner one Carl Muscarello, of Italian origins, also met on the occasion of an anniversary a good 62 years later.
This is the sad truth, unfortunately. Nothing can exist that expresses beauty that is not inevitably tainted by petty wickedness. Aigner's axiom indeed declares that whatever you do, there will always be someone to alter the result. How nasty and reckless they can sometimes be, those Americans.
As much as possible, I want to detach myself from this violence and imagine the spontaneity of that kiss. Despite everything, let's try to imagine that it is a good kiss, perhaps the most beautiful kiss or at least the most significant. A modest act of love that decrees the end of a horror.
As much as possible.
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