The Great Life Photographers

by Life Magazine and LIFE

Book Overview

This book represents the work of every LIFE magazine staff photographer from the 20th century, as well as a handful of others closely affiliated with the magazine, including Alfred Eisenstadt, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, Eugene Smith, and Joe McNally. THE GREAT LIFE PHOTOGRAPHERS presents the most iconic images of the past century, as well as little-known gems from the LIFE archives.Many of these images are markers of the major milestones...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0821228927
• ISBN13: 9780821228920
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Bulfinch Press
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 5.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 8.3" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

Amazing Photography and History

This book profiles all of the Life's photographers and showcases their best work. It has lots of full page pictures. There are many amazing photos that I have never seen before. It's great for people who like photography, history, or both.

Amazing!

This book was a birthday gift to my daughter, but the whole family is enjoying the artistic expression of the Life photographers. Beautiful and, in many cases, thought provoking photos. Love it!!

Very happy w/ book

Book was in excellent condition and more of a treasure than I had even expected. Thanks a million.

A superb retrospective of the golden age of photo journalism

It's not fashionable these days to speak of Henry Luce as great because his political views weren't left-wing. But the truth is Luce was a brilliant man who built a publishing empire based on delivering information in a concise way. His empire began with Time, then Fortune and next Life, a magazine that told its stories through pictures. (Sports Illustrated and the abominable People followed, the latter after Luce's death.) Life editors perfected the photo essay. To do this, they hired some of the finest photographers in the world. This work showcases the work of 99 of those photographers in 698 color and black-and-white photos. It is a glorious work. Life photographers were perfectionists. The technicians at the Life labs who printed their work were perfectionists. The editors who selected, cropped and laid out the work of the photographers and lab techs were perfectionists. The result was for nearly sixty years a collection of some of the finest photography created in the 20th Century. It is sad that public tastes changed, that television overwhelmed the desire to leaf through the pages of magazines like Life. The news in those days was largely captured in the still photograph. And here many of them are. The young Shah of Iran talking with Wendell Wilkie, the 1940 Republican Presidential candidate on a flight somewhere. An iconic photo of fashion-plate Jacqueline Kennedy and nattily-clad toddler son John, Jr. walking along the ocean in Palm Beach. American soldiers passing by a fallen comrade on a brige across the Roer River.The dazzingly beautiful 16 year old Elizabeth Taylor and incredibly intense 24 year old Marlon Brando two years before his first film role. The crowded Saturday night main street in small town Franklin, Indiana in 1940. All these and more were grist for the weekly Life Magazine, the equivalent then of a dozen or more cable television stations today. It isn't mentioned in this book how many photos exist in the Life archives. Probably a million and maybe far more. But these 698 are a fair representation of the skill, talent and greatness of the 99 Life photographers seen here. (Not included are the many free-lancers whose work also appeared in Life.) For anyone who appreciates photography as an art, this is a must-have. Jerry

Captured: compassion and compositions.

On page 558 of this stunning photo book there is a studio shot taken in 1960 by Bill Sumits of thirty-eight Life photographers, surely the only time in history that so many great photographers have been together in one place and it is amazing to think that the ninety-nine featured in the book were all on the staff of this one publication. The book is arranged alphabetically and each photographer gets between five and eight images plus their photo and short hundred or so word biography. Now it's possible to see who took so many images that defined a moment and became classic examples of photojournalism and also to see other examples of their great work. John Loengard's introduction does not say so but I assume all the photos did appear in Life and they cover the years from 1936 (when the title started) to 1997. The book is well designed with mostly one photo per page (well printed in 175 dpi) and a caption and nicely some photos get longer captions where a photographer reveals some background detail about their images. There are a lot of news type photos here, especially from the Second World War years but equally as many taken from the photo-essay style work that Life became famous for. Others show celebrities and ordinary folk going about their lives. These photos are so good that you have to stop and really take notice of what they are telling you. I think this wonderful book is a strong visual reminder of how great Life was. A fascinating book that came out some years ago: Great Photographic Essays from Life and still available (quite cheaply, too) has twenty-two photo essays reproduced slightly smaller than they originally appeared in the weekly. I found it fascinating to see how great photos, which I've seen many times in other books over the years, were presented on the page. ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.