Life Magazine And The Power Of Photography

The first comprehensive consideration of Life magazine's groundbreaking and influential contribution to the history of photography From the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, the vast majority of the photographs printed and consumed in the United States appeared on the pages of illustrated magazines. Offering an in-depth look at the photography featured in Life magazine throughout its weekly run from 1936 to 1972, this volume examines how the magazine's use of images fundamentally shaped the modern idea of photography in the United States. The work of photographers both celebrated and overlooked--including Margaret Bourke-White, Larry Burrows, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Frank Dandridge, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Fritz Goro, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith--is explored in the context of the creative and editorial structures at Life. Contributions from 25 scholars in a range of fields, from art history to American studies, provide insights into how the photographs published in Life--used to promote a predominately white, middle-class perspective--came to play a role in cultural dialogues in the United States around war, race, technology, art, and national identity. Drawing on unprecedented access to Life magazine's picture and paper archives, as well as photographers' archives, this generously illustrated volume presents previously unpublished materials, such as caption files, contact sheets, and shooting scripts, that shed new light on the collaborative process behind many now-iconic images and photo-essays.

This collection of photographs captures the moments that changed our modern world. The pictures are sometimes beautiful, often striking - and undeniably powerful.

Photographer Donna Ferrato goes on a radical 50-year road trip across the USA as women fight for equality in the bedroom and the boardroom. Holy follows her journey from the sexual revolution of the '60s through the #metoo era of today. Holy is forged from one woman's outrage against a woman-hating world. May it anger you. Donna Ferrato's radical photographs show what women are capable of surviving. More than survive, Holy depicts women who prevail. Holy is an invitation to understand how it feels being held down by the patriarchy-what we are fighting for, what we are up against--and how we manage to maintain a sense of desire and appetite. Fighting for equality in the bedroom and the boardroom, Ferrato's journey follows the sexual revolution of the '60s through the #metoo era of today. Holy is a showcase of power. Donna's images reveal women's bodies in all their monstrous glory-even her own. May these photographs mobilize you, whether you are cis or trans, young or old, butch or femme. Human survival depends on women. Embrace your instincts, desires, brainpower, and strength. Embrace each other.

The tension between social reform photography and photojournalism is examined through this study of the life and work of German ?gr?ansel Mieth (1909-1998), who made an unlikely journey from migrant farm worker to Life photographer. She was the second woman in that role, after Margaret Bourke-White. Unlike her colleagues, Mieth was a working-class reformer with a deep disdain for Life's conservatism and commercialism. In fact, her work often subverted Life's typical representations of women, workers, and minorities. Some of her most compelling photo essays used skillful visual storytelling to offer fresh views on controversial topics: birth control, vivisection, labor unions, and Japanese American internment during the Second World War. Her dual role as reformer and photojournalist made her a desirable commodity at Life in the late 1930s and early 40s, but this role became untenable in Cold War America, when her career was cut short. Today Mieth's life and photographs stand as compelling reminders of the vital yet overlooked role of immigrant women in twentieth-century photojournalism. Women, Workers, and Race in LIFE Magazine draws upon a rich array of primary sources, including Mieth's unpublished memoir, oral histories, and labor archives. The book seeks to unravel and understand the multi-layered, often contested stories of the photographer's life and work. It will be of interest to scholars of photography history, women's studies, visual culture, and media history.

Mostly candid and spontaneous, documentary photography serves to preserve a moment in time. In Lens on Life, celebrated documentary photographer and author of the best-selling The Art of iPhoneography: A Guide to Mobile Creativity, Stephanie Calabrese Roberts, inspires you to explore, shoot, and share documentary photographs, guiding you as you define your own style. Illustrated with the author's striking artwork and diverse insight and perspectives from seasoned photographers including Elliott Erwitt, Elizabeth Fleming, Sion Fullana, Ed Kashi, John Loengard, Beth Rooney, and Rick Smolan, this book will sharpen your artistic intuition and give you the confidence to take on personal or professional documentary assignments. Full of advice that will challenge you and strengthen your photography, Lens on Life shows you how to capture an authentic view of your world.

Since its inception, TIME magazine has been synonymous not just with outstanding journalism, but also with outstanding photography. Now, to mark the 175th anniversary of photography and the birth of photojournalism, the Editors of TIME magazine are publishing this companion book to the groundbreaking digital celebration of photography that TIME.com will be mounting online, displaying the most influential photographs of all time. While they may not be the most famous or well-known photographs, each one is unique for the way in which it changed, influenced, or commemorated a particular world event. From the first sports photograph to ever win the Pulitzer Prize - that of Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium to the photograph of Student Neda Agha-Soltan's death during Iran's 2009 election protests, each of the photographs in 100 Photographs: The Most Influential Images of All Time is significant in how it forever changed how we live, learn, communicate, and in many cases, view the world.

The Great LIFE Photographers is the most comprehensive anthology of LIFE photography ever published, featuring the best work of every staff photographer who worked for the famous magazine, and that of a handful of others who shot for LIFE. It was always the photographers who made LIFE great, and this is the most vivid and exciting portrait of those men and women that has ever been produced. The book offers more than 100 portfolios including those of Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Carl Mydans, Gordon Parks, W. Eugene Smith, Robert Capa, Ralph Morse, Nina Leen, Harry Benson, Philippe Halsman, and Joe McNally, whose work for LIFE in the aftermath of September 11 was in the finest tradition of the magazine. Each portfolio includes a short biography, offering an intimate look at the people behind the lens. Here are the defining moments of the 20th century, including MacArthur wading ashore by Mydans, Capa's D-Day landing at Omaha Beach and, of course, Eisenstaedt's sailor kissing the nurse. Here are the first pictures taken from inside the womb and the first taken from outer space. Here are powerful scenes from Tiananmen Square and from the American South during the Civil Rights movement. LIFE helped make icons of Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles and Michael Jackson, and those indelible photographs are here too. This attractive new paperback edition is an affordable way to own some of the most memorable photographs ever made, stunningly reproduced in black and white and full color.

This book offers an outstanding retrospective collection of the master of 20th-century photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Reproduced in exquisite black and white, the images in this book range from Henri Cartier-Bresson's earliest work in France, Spain, and Mexico through his postwar travels in Asia, the US, and Russia, and even include landscapes from the 1970s, when he retired his camera to pursue drawing. While his instinct for capturing what he called the decisive moment was unparalleled, as a photojournalist Cartier-Bresson was uniquely concerned with the human impact of historic events. In his photographs of the liberation of France from the Nazis, the death of Ghandi, and the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Cartier-Bresson focused on the reactions of the crowds rather than the subjects of the events. And while his portraits of Sartre, Giacometti, Faulkner, Capote, and other artists are iconic, he gave equal attention to those forgotten by history: a dead resistance fighter lying on the bank of the Rhine, children playing alongside the Berlin Wall, and a eunuch in Peking's Imperial Court. Divided into six thematic sections, the book presents the photographs in spare double-page spreads. In a handwritten note included at the end of the book, Cartier-Bresson writes, "In order to give meaning to the world, one must feel involved in what one singles out through the viewfinder." His work shows how he has been able to capture the decisive moment with such extreme humility and profound humanity.