Maria Eisner

Eisner studied in Germany and worked for the illustrated press from the age of twenty, was trained by Simon Guttmann, head of the very successful Berlin-based agency Dephot (Deutsche Photo Dienst), and her imagery attracted clients including Berlin publisher Martin Hürlimann.

Foundation and membership

Alliance Photo started initially at Eisner's apartment in 26 rue de la Pépinière and brought together Eisner's friends from Studio Zuber operated by René Zuber who worked for Étienne Damour's advertising agency from 1929 to 1932, contributing to the magazine Vendre, then had opened his own photographic studio, rue Vernier with Robert Capa, Pierre Boucher, David Seymour, Emeric Feher, René Zuber and Denise Bellon who were all recruited for Eisner's new agency. Suzanne Laroche and Juliette Lasserre soon joined them.

"Chim" Seymour mentions "a German girl", who is Eisner, in one of his letters home; 'Socially, I am moving in new circles, away from the Polish gang. I am more among photographers, thinking people, interested in the same problems as myself. However, I feel a stranger and I am missing the "togetherness" ' of our Polish bunch. I met a German girl, who became quite prominent in the French press and she feels as I do. We are trying to organise some kind of association of revolutionary-minded photographers..."From October 1935, Gerda Taro sold pictures for Alliance Photo, then started working for the agency as a photographer, and introduced the fictitious American Capa (Endre Friedmann's pseudonym) to Alliance in the hope of higher royalties, but Eisner recognised his imagery and offered him a lower monthly advance of 1,100 francs in return for covering three assignments a week, of which 500 francs were used for expenses. With the 1,200 francs a month Eisner was paying Gerda, the couple had at last a modest income, although they had to work hard; early in April André wrote to his mother: "In the past four weeks I haven't slept more than five hours a night. We get up early and run around all day, and at night we manufacture an article."

The collective was officially registered in 13 December 1935, and eventually settled at 125 rue du Faubourg St Honoré.

Eisner's particularity was to propose subjects to the editors without waiting for their request and she also promoted her photographers as authors, demanding that their shots be credited in a by-line. To meet the quotidian interests of the press, it used photographers who recorded current events; Capa, Seymour, Cartier-Bresson and a few others including the Japanese Yōnosuke Natori. It was Alliance Photo which in 1936 contributed to Vu Capa's famous photograph of a fighter in the Spanish Civil War apparently felled by a bullet.