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| Source: time magazine |
It's a good argument that photos can sometimes mislead in determining the reality of an event when the frame takes away other things happening in the periphery that can give a fuller picture. No matter what you think of that philosophical problem in photojournalism, the photojournalists who worked for Life Magazine decades ago managed, almost by sheer magic, to capture the purest and rawest essence of events going on around the world. And their portraits of notable people told more stories than any A E; biography or biopic could ever tell. When Life Magazine first turned into a photojournalistic magazine in November of 1936 via Time Magazine founder Henry Luce (and after decades as a general interest mag), one of the best media tools was in place to capture the 20th century like never before. Their work inspired many to pursue all types of photography from street photography to landscape photography.
As with most photojournalists who truly love their work, there's always a vast collection of photographs that might be brilliant, yet couldn't get into the magazine originally due not having enough space. Sometimes those outtakes are better than anything already published. So just imagine being able to see never-before-seen photographs of Life's first and greatest photojournalist, Alfred Eisenstaedt. Now that Google is taking their continuing and awesome respect of historical archives to the hilt and adding Life's vast photo archive to their search engines, we may finally have a chance to see previously unseen photos from Eisenstaedt as well as from dozens of other photojournalists who worked decades for the magazine.
Considering the world has trouble enough making history compelling for themselves or finding avenues to finding the ultimate truth, these archives are going to be the most valuable documents available online to help us see all of our most beloved (and reviled) cultural figures and historical events through the most compelling prism anybody could desire outside of actually being there.
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| Source: time magazine |
Certainly seeing some work of the late Eisenstaedt that hasn't yet seen the light of day is significant enough, particularly when you realize these photos will be available for free. Of course, Time, Inc. (forever the owner of Life) still wants to make some money off of this venture, so you'll also be able to buy a pristine digital print of every photo should you want one to frame and put on a prominent wall in your home. Yes, that means Eisenstaedt's famous photo of the unknown sailor kissing the unknown woman in Times Square on V-J Day in 1945 will finally be available for you to buy in a detailed print rather than attempting a blow up from past reprints in other publications.
Seeing nothing but Eisenstaedt's known and unknown work for free online would be exciting on its own, though you'll have a chance to see the vast collections of all the other superior photojournalists who worked at Life. Already through Google, you can see dozens of legendary notable portraits taken by such famous names as Allan Grant, Sally Kirkland and Gordon Parks just to name three. Plus, Eisenstaedt took plenty of portraits himself. However, it's the war photography and photographic captures of the dark side to American society in general that will give us a richer portrait of history, especially if we can see additional photography that shows a more expansive picture. Plus, if you find it a chore to search for these photos on Google--be patient and you'll be able to find all of this, plus much more, at a comprehensive website at some point in 2009...
We should all be thankful that Time, Inc. decided to take the entire Life photo archive and put it on a website of their own. By putting them all at Life.com, the world will have one location where you can put the entire 20th century into a supreme context. It'll also offer those bored with reading textual history a photographic journey that will tell so much more or just enhance based on what you hopefully already know about a person or event. Keep in mind, though, that Time, Inc. is still working on archiving the photographs and are scheduled to get the website up at an unknown date in '09 as mentioned. It wouldn't surprise me if it's delayed longer due to the volume involved.
In the meantime, you can see the main page of the website here: http://www.life.com/Life/ to get a teaser for what's to come via a small compendium of stunning Life photos that appear in a giant box and elegantly fade in and out in a slideshow format.
Yes, a lot of people will mostly want to absorb every detail of the outstanding celebrity portraits done over the decades of Life's existence. It's the photography showing the brutalities of war and poverty both abroad and in our country that nevertheless should prove the most value for us in today's time. Through the eyes of photojournalists of yesteryear with the names of Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Larry Burrows and Henri Huet as just a small sampling, WWII, Korea and Vietnam were seen through a prism that's influenced all other photojournalists of war to date. Fortunately, with Life Magazine still going in one form or another through the Iraq War, many haunting images were taken of our current war that will also be included on Life.com.
That's one thing to remember about this new archive: It's a signal that Life isn't just a product of the past but also the present. Even though Life (at least as of this writing) doesn't exist in any form since stopping their recent incarnation as a Sunday newspaper supplement, Time, Inc. still has a team of freelancing photojournalists who will provide photographic masterpieces of our current events and ones in the future. Those future events will likely be the most compelling photographs of our time, and that just might make Life.com the place to be to compare everything happening to what happened before.
Having those photographic comparisons in stunning clarity is a gift no conscientious photographer should take for granted...
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