More than emphasize this tendency, the book positively burlesques it. With the advantage of hindsight, this collection of Eisenstaedt’s work is made to emphasize the German tendency toward regimentation, which, it’s now almost cliche to say, made Nazism possible. I see pictures.” It must be Vitiello, then, who has edited the pictures from the ’20s and ’30s so that their portrait of Germany has heavy political overtones. In the book’s introduction Vitiello quotes Eisenstaedt as saying, “I don’t see Germany with political eyes. In the show, they suffer from the lack of this kind of editorial treatment. Either way, in the book the pictures have more of a conception behind them, more purpose. Vitiello, who first proposed the return to Germany as an occasion for a new Eisenstaedt book.

I don’t know whether Eisenstaedt acted as his own editor and sequenced the pictures this time, or left that work to Gregory A. There are therefore no photographs in the show from his 40-year career as a staffer at Life yet the mentality of the Life photographer used to having his work shaped by an editor is very much in evidence here. Called “Eisenstaedt: Germany,” it covers two phases of his career: the initial one up until 1935, when he left Germany for America, and 1979–80, when he returned for the first time. The Alfred Eisenstaedt show is a prime example.

But I often have the feeling, after seeing a show at ICP, that I ought to review the book instead. It permits photography that might not be seen otherwise to flourish. On the contrary, this symbiotic relationship is a healthy one. There is nothing wrong with this practice. The exhibition is, to speak more plainly, a promotion for the book. Its publication is the occasion for the show, rather than the other way around. In the second place, the book is often not really a catalogue at all. In the first place, much of the work ICP shows is photojournalism that was originally shot for reproduction, and it looks better in the book than on the wall. At the International Center of Photography, however, this attitude is sometimes misleading. This is an attitude that comes from painting exhibitions, where the point is to see the original. It’s an appendage to the event, a memento. I often think of an exhibition catalogue as being like the souvenir program one buys at a football game or a rock concert. International Center of Photography Museum (ICP)

Alfred eisenstaedt