Today, I picked up quite a find at a thrift shop benefitting a local hospice. Eisenstaedt: Witness to our time. First published in 1966, this book contains over 300 photos taken between 1930 and 1965 by the remarkable and prolific LIFE magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

Many of his photos are of famous people, but not necessarily at their polished best. One of his most popular images is of a sailor exuberantly hugging a nurse bystander during a parade at the end of WWII. However, in most of the pics, serious expressions outweigh pleasantry and humor, and subjects tend to look as though they struggle with their roles in life. There are occasional very attractive portraits, people with great poise, but most are of flesh responding to the weight of realities of war and living. Even the whimsical cover photo of an ice skating waiter bearing a tray of wineglasses shows a man who experiences his work with weary intensity. Many subjects look like real characters, self-doubt mingled with bravado. He had an eye for capturing beneath the skin.

The book becomes a sort of pictorial history. Eisenstaedt covered the opera stages, streets, dinner tables, government halls, ski slopes, bars, canals, and deserts around the world. There are dogs, elephants, frogs, camels, spoonbills, roosters and cheetahs. Most animals, though, are pictured as they relate to people.

As an amateur photographer, I’m fascinated that perhaps a quarter of the images here aren’t clearly focused. Now that we’re living in an age of affordable digital cameras with amazing auto-focus capacities, it’s easy to forget that there was once effort involved in getting lighting and focus coordinated for each image on film. Critics today can harp if every part of a photo is not crisp. It’s refreshing to be reminded a picture can have great impact without perfect technique.

In a way, this book is contrarily cheerful. It gives the viewer permission to belong, to be a somewhat flabby, baggy, self-inflated, out-of-focus, dour, imperfect human along with hundreds of people Eisenstaedt photographed. In his fine work, even governmental rulers, great scientists, and movie stars are mortal members of the general mass of humanity.