Life Magazine Photo Archive To Be Available To Public Online

Guardian:

One of the biggest photo collections in the world that ranges from the 1750s through to the seminal moments of the 20th century and on into the present day was made available to the public online from today.

The bulk of the archive is from Life magazine, the premier platform for photojournalists in the 20th century.

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.

Read the whole story: Guardian

Comments

[Chaucea]

The Library of Congress also has some really neat photography archives on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

Including color photographs from the 30s and 40s:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/72157603671370361/

[Chaucea]

Oh this is so incredibly cool!

I'd looked through all the covers of LIFE magazine online a few weeks ago--an amazing amount of storytelling in all those photographs. And getting a chance to see this archive is absolutely fantastic!! :-D

[larry278]

Since LIFE has, again, ceased publication & LIFE's era of mass circulation & state of the art photography & photo-journalism were 50 or more years ago-it wouldn't be fair to compare LIFE to the 21st century EBONY. EBONY now uses 21st century state of the art equipment & other techniques. Hey, I forgot EBONY was published during LIFE's so called golden era of mass circulation. I wonder what would be like to compare a 1952 issue of EBONY with a 1952 issue of LIFE, a Luce, mostly white, endevor, published & edited in NYC, LIFE, versus a black owned with a mostly black staff endevor published in Chicago, EBONY. That could be fun & informative.

[Retrofuturistic]

I kept wanting there to be a link in the article to said photo archive....

[Swrv]

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

[davidwayneosedach]

Thanks Google! We'll have fun checking out these iconic photos for free.

[clsmithj]

In this world of digital photography I don't get how LIFE magazine died.

[larry278]

Check out how LIFE chose/edit­ed/display­ed the photos it used. Now check out how digital photos are composed. Do you see that the photos LIFE used weren't well composed for photos created in LIFE's era? Now check out the digital photos which are being composed & used in 2008. Compare these photos to LIFE's photos. LIFE used passable commercial quality photos. LIFE was the epitome of the state of the art of commercial photography of its era. If a ground breaking artistic photo made it into LIFE it was an accident. While there were & are artistic commercial photographers or news photographers; they make their living on schlock & dreck. Luce didn't know or appreciate art. The photo editors for Time-Warner's mags don't dare use artistic photos; Time-Warner's mags are the run of the mill, not state of the art, creative or artistic.

[mckinley]

"Life" magazine was absolutely visceral and quintessential to American life and culture throughout the mid-20th century -- and HuffPo picks a cover of Sarah Jessica Parker for this article??????????

[kothian1]

They had photography in 1750?

[postman606]

First perm. images not until the 19th century.

[Takae]

Yes and no. The history of photography is dated much further back to roughly 4th century, but successful attempts of making photographic impressions *permanent* weren't achieved until approx. 1825. From thereon, a type of daguerreotype was further developed until approx. 1840 when a permanent clear photograph was made. It has a cool history. It's worth reading up, I promise.