Great Photographic Essays from Life

by Maitland Armstrong Edey

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0821207423
• ISBN13: 9780821207420
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: New York Graphic Society Books
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 4.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

It's a wonderful Life

The really nice thing about this book is the large page size so that the spreads of Life, at 14 by 10.5 inches, can be reproduced a bit smaller at 12 by 8.75 inches. The twenty-two photo assignments included are exactly as they appeared in the magazine (the pages haven't been scanned from the weekly but made up from the original photos and the text reset) and they look wonderful. The photo stories run from the first issue, November 23, 1936, with nine pages photographed in Montana by Margaret Bourke-White to a story about an adopted boy taken by Leonard McCombe for the December 17, 1971 issue. Two famous features by W Eugene Smith are here: Country doctor (eleven pages, September 20, 1948) and the Spanish village (ten pages, April 9, 1951). Apart from the stunning images in all these photo essays I found it interesting to see how they were laid out. You can follow the ebb and flow of big and small photos to create an impact for the reader. Bear in mind that these pages were designed so that the pictures worked for the reader, they are all oblong and none of them have captions or headlines overprinted. No doubt the pages look old fashioned when compared to today's publications with strong graphic techniques to grab the reader but with Life the photo was king. Oddly, because the book is big and well produced I was surprised that the photos are in a relatively low screen size of 133 though the weekly only used 110 for black and white photo and 120 for color. A minor disappointment which doesn't detract from the wonderful feel of these photos. Most of the photographers featured worked for Life (Berenice Abbott, Cartier-Bresson, Kosti Ruohomaa and Clarence Laughlin didn't) some of them for several years and Maitland Edy, who eventually became Assistant Managing Editor, writes a fascinating essay in the front of the book about the interaction between the photographers, writers and designers all striving to produce brilliant issues week after week. This lovely book has some of the best essay pages they created. Incidentally, I'm surprised at how cheaply copies can be picked up, grab one while you can. The perfect complement to Great Photographic Essays is the six hundred page The Great LIFE Photographers featuring (and beautifully, too, with a 175 screen) the work of ninety-nine photographers who worked for the magazine over the years. ***SEE SOME INSIDE SPREADS by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.