Life Magazine

 

A complete and accessible archive of LIFE Magazine is this week’s Wrap-up.  Although LIFE is probably familiar to most of us over fifty, publication actually began its run in 1883 as a humor magazine.  The version which is best known, featured the “Life” title  in a red rectangular field off-centered at the top of the cover page. Its run went to press in 1936.  During the following years, weekly circulation peaked at 13.5 million copies. Life (weekly), as I knew it ended publication in the year 1972.   From 1972 through 1978 it appeared as special editions after which until 2000, issues became monthly.

Life magazine is Known primarily for photojournalism, it documented American life and history from Pearl Harbor to Woodstock and in ads such as Camel Cigarettes Smoked by More Doctors to RCA Victor Color TV.  The BBC, in a print essay describes Life  as the Photos that defined the U.S.  Of some 200,000 pages of photos appearing in the magazine, many, according to the BBC essay are iconic. In the essay, the author also references the exhibit, LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography and the curatorial processes at the Princeton University Art Museum.  The curators of the exhibit also created an interactive digital module where one “can view each photo story featured in the exhibition as it was published on the pages of LIFE, as well as the cover for that week's issue and the paid advertisements adjacent to many of the stories.” The Google Cultural Institute has also collected uploaded over 4 million images from the archives.

To browse through the collection start at the title page  and begin your visit. From each edition’s title page, visitors can page (preview) through its contents, browse through the magazine archives by selecting a linked decade or search by keyword through the entire collection or in that issue.

The Google Book collection also includes a few other well-known magazines such as Popular Science, first published in 1872. To view the entire list of magazines in Google Books, click here.

With kind regards,

Jim Fisk MLS MA

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