Farmingdale, NY – The American Airpower Museum is open this Valentine’s Day and along with two-for-one admission for couples, is inviting couples to recreated the the famous V-J Day Times Square kiss. The famous photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt that portrays an American sailor kissing a woman in a white dress on Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day) in Times Square in New York City, on August 14, 1945.
The photograph, taken with a Leica IIIa camera, was published a week later in Life magazine among many photographs of celebrations around the United States that were presented in a twelve-page section titled Victory Celebrations.[1] A two-page spread faces three other kissing poses among celebrators in Washington, D.C., Kansas City, and Miami opposite Eisenstaedt’s, which was given a full-page display. Kissing was a favorite pose encouraged by media photographers of service personnel during the war, but Eisenstaedt was photographing a spontaneous event that occurred in Times Square as the announcement of the end of the war on Japan was made by U.S. President Harry S. Truman at seven o’clock. Similar jubilation spread quickly with the news.
