LIFE Magazines on Google Books

Bill Burk · Jun 14, 2014

When I started High School, I read every LIFE Magazine I could get my hands on, the school library had a full set and let me wander the stacks...

I'm sure those days shaped my photographic eye, though I can't really prove it directly...

I feel like a kid again, here they are ready to leaf through...

For example LIFE Feb 13, 1950 contains the article where one of my favorite HCB photographs was published...

http://books.google.com/books?id=FlMEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

snapguy · Jun 14, 2014

agreed

I agree with you abut Life Magazine. But scrolling through that edition is embarrassing. Some of that stuff. All those booze and ciggy ads. The Lord Calvert ad nautical dude looks a lot like Thurston Howell III from Mary Ann's -- whoops, Gilligan's -- Island. And 300 bucks for a 16 inch Philco TV? My folks would never pay such an outrageous amount for a TeeVee and get maybe three stations. HCB's photos, of course, are fine.

Prof_Pixel · Jun 14, 2014

Thanks Bill,

Back in 1958 I was published 1/2 page in LIFE - see the left image on page 46 of http://books.google.com/books?id=bj8EAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&lr=&rview=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

I hadn't looked at it in years.

snapguy · Jun 14, 2014

great

Great stuff, Prof. I have had thousands of photos published in newspapers and magazines around the world but exactly one in Life. I wasn't aware you could look that issue up. I'll have to do so. Let's see, it was 1970, the Millrose Games....

omaha · Jun 14, 2014

I love looking through old magazines. I love the graphic style, the imagery, the photos, everything.

And don't be too harsh when casting judgement on the past. Our turn to be judged is coming.

Prof_Pixel · Jun 14, 2014

omaha said:
And don't be too harsh when casting judgement on the past. Our turn to be judged is coming.

Yup!!!

Gerald C Koch · Jun 14, 2014

My uncle had every issue from the very beginning. I too was impressed by the photography. Unfortunately when they moved to Florida the magazines were just too heavy to ship and had to be left behind.

gone · Jun 14, 2014

The cover price says it all. 25 cents. Life and Look were always my favorite magazines growing up, along w/ Hot Rod. Uncle Ralph had the REAL good magazines, but they were hidden away from Aunt Emma pretty well. Lots better than National Geographic, let me tell you!

This was the cover off the forerunner of Hot Rod, back in 1941. They sure should have kept the original name. The interesting thing is that the guy who built the first belly tank lake race car was.....Bill Burke. Pretty close.

https://www.google.com/search?q=hot...zine-the-original-hot-rod-magazine%2F;800;531

lxdude · Jun 14, 2014

momus said:
The cover price says it all. 25 cents. Life and Look were always my favorite magazines growing up, along w/ Hot Rod. Uncle Ralph had the REAL good magazines, but they were hidden away from Aunt Emma pretty well. Lots better than National Geographic, let me tell you!

The ones promoting the nudist lifestyle?

Jeff Kubach · Jun 15, 2014

That was neat! Thanks for posting.

Jeff

Bill Burk · Jun 15, 2014

I didn't expect APUG'ers to have been published in LIFE but I guess I shouldn't be surprised!

What got me going is that Henri Cartier-Bresson was shooting COLOR! I had a totally different impression and now I can't even imagine how he did it? Was it like me, one body and just switch "gears" day by day. Or did he have two bodies... Did he take same shots both color and black and white? The questions go on and on...

Ken Nadvornick · Jun 16, 2014

silveror0 said:
Thanks for posting, Bill. I have long wished I could find a copy of the story about the mid-air collision of the XB-70 bomber in June 1966. It touched me deeply, as I had spent five years as a lead engineer in the design of the portion of the airplane that included the cockpit and ejection system, before moving from L.A. to Seattle. I was stunned when I first saw the headline on the day following the crash, while I was at my first (of several) AA workshops in Yosemite. It was an incredible story that Life published later of the detailed sequence of events of the collision, including the struggles of the pilot to successfully eject and the co-pilot who was not so fortunate. The system was designed to allow ejecting at 70,000 ft altitude at Mach 3!, maintaining the "shirt-sleeve" environment of the cockpit sealed into the capsule (while the outside surface of the plane was at 450F/232C).

For anyone interested, p.126:

http://books.google.com/books?id=D1...KYBA&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=xb-70&f=true

BTW, it's helpful to use the two-pg spread display mode and the magnifier to read through the article, while ignoring ads.

Wow. What a gripping story that was. Even all these decades later.

It's been said that engineering is the art of risk mitigation. Not augmentation. Not elimination. Because there are an infinite number of ways things can go wrong, but only one or at best a handful of ways they can go right, when things fail they often do so in ways and sequences and combinations never anticipated. That's why systems are designed to be robust. To handle the unknowns. Or to try to.

That high-altitude high-speed ejection system failed for one pilot. But it worked for the other. It didn't work perfectly in either instance. But it worked well enough in one instance that a life was saved. And that's a successful mitigation. Just ask those Apollo 13 guys 46 months later.

Ken

Curt · Jun 16, 2014

Bill Burk said:
When I started High School, I read every LIFE Magazine I could get my hands on, the school library had a full set and let me wander the stacks...

I'm sure those days shaped my photographic eye, though I can't really prove it directly...

I feel like a kid again, here they are ready to leaf through...

For example LIFE Feb 13, 1950 contains the article where one of my favorite HCB photographs was published...

http://books.google.com/books?id=FlMEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

My grandparents subscribed to life and Look magazines in the fifties. I spent hours and hours with each issue. They were major publications at the time. The black and white photographs planted the seed for sure.

Trask · Jun 16, 2014

Bill Burk said:
What got me going is that Henri Cartier-Bresson was shooting COLOR! I had a totally different impression and now I can't even imagine how he did it? Was it like me, one body and just switch "gears" day by day. Or did he have two bodies... Did he take same shots both color and black and white? The questions go on and on...

At the HCB show I attended a couple of weeks ago I read that he felt that he had to be responsive to requests from clients like LIFE for color shots but that he considered them "documentary" in nature, not like the photographs he made in B/W that (in his view) relied on proper framing, tone, timing, etc. to create a more interpretive image.

DWThomas · Jun 16, 2014

Wow! Thanks, I had no idea these resources were available. A friend just sent me two (actual) sheets from a LIFE Magazine that delved into pinhole photography -- in August 1943! The lead-in has a photo of an Army O-52 observation plane with "TAKEN WITH ROLLEIFLEX CAMERA" superimposed on it. The caption under the photo includes "photographer set shutter of his camera for 1/50 of a second, stopped down to F16." Ya don't see that in too many magazines these days! Apparently it was part of an ongoing series of photography themed stuff LIFE ran back then.

The article goes on to show a pinhole camera built and tried using non-conventional chemistry for processing.

(I was around then, but at age two wasn't paying much attention!)

I was considering scanning the article to share, but lo and behold, the Gargoyle folks have done it for me.

baachitraka · Jun 16, 2014

I like all those ads in that magazine...

LIFE Magazines on Google Books

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