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Remember Life Magazine? I sure don’t. Well, I recognize the name, but I don’t think I ever read an issue. Despite my ignorance, since 1883, Life has been published in various forms, with most of its twentieth-century existence focusing on photojournalism. Life’s last incarnation — a newspaper supplement — ceased publication last year. Now, Google and Life have teamed up to host the entire magazine’s entire photo archive online. And this isn’t just some publicity snaps — when they’re finished posting the content, the collection will include over 10,000,000 images, most of which were never published. From The Guardian’s story on the collaboration:
About 10m images will be available, from Marilyn Monroe and JFK to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. About 97% of the pictures have never been seen before.
Google announced today it had done a deal with Life to put their pictures online. Also available is work from other archives, much of it collected by the former Time publisher, Henry Luce.
The collection includes the entire works of Life photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili and Nina Leen. Also available are: the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York from the 1880’s; and Hugo Jaeger Nazi-era Germany 1937-1944.
Pictured above: “Tick Tack Toe Machine” by Loomis Dean, April 1952. (See also: a closer look.)
Today there are “only” about two million images online. Go have a look! I particularly recommend: Apollo 7 images, youth images, and Loomis Dean’s photography.
Fantastic! Life has had amazing photos over the years.
posted by Dawn on 11-20-2008 at 8:15 pm
Thanks so much for posting this! It’s incredible!
posted by Brandy on 11-20-2008 at 11:55 pm
I probably wouldnt have ever seen a Life magazine either had it not been for a college history prof of mine. He was in his 80’s and had a HUGE collection of Life mags from the 1930’s (?) forward. The walls of his office were lined with shelf after shelf of the magazines, all dutifully protected in plastic sheafs. Once a week during class he’d grab a box of them from whatever time period we were studying and let us peruse and discuss. The pictures and articles were an amazing teaching tool (the pictures were actually better than the articles at this) and I’m really thankful that I got to see them - and now the whole world will be able to as well!
posted by Elphaba on 11-21-2008 at 9:39 am