Time, Inc., founder Henry Luce had an idea for a new magazine. From his office, a short walk from New York’s Times Square, it occurred to him that photos printed on large pages could tell stories as well as, maybe even better than, words. Rather than read, subscribers could watch, witness, and wonder. Of course, by the 1930s other magazines had already upped the number of photographs on their pages, but Luce intended to take the concept to a new level.
He thought some more and conferred with others about his ideas for the new publication. In 1936 he articulated his vision: “To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things . . . the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed; thus to see and to be shown is now the will and new expectancy of mankind.”1 Luce’s brainchild, LIFE magazine, “The Show-Book of the World,” freed their photographers to pursue and picture subjects as they found them. Loosely composed directions and a few editors’ notes made up the full complement of directions for LIFE’s cameramen.2 Uninhibited, photographers could surprise, even shock, the viewer.3 Just like life itself, the new magazine strove to be varied, unpredictable, and adventurous.
Of course, in addition to publishing pictures, LIFE printed letters. But photos always eclipsed words. During the magazine’s weekly layout sessions, LIFE editors first spread out and arranged numerous pictures, and then added words sparingly.4 LIFE introduced the photo essay to Americans. Pictures told the story. Words clarified the meaning. And usually just a few words sufficed.
In some respects the magazine’s images printed bigger than life, or at least larger than anything appearing on the pages of other publications. Most other magazines had miniature images on noticeably smaller pages. Newspapers turned out a few grainy pictures on pulp newspaper stock. To publish more photos proved cost prohibitive. Consequently, text continued its dominance of most publications—but not LIFE.
Several factors converged to fertilize LIFE’s propagation of the visual. For one, technological innovations supported the production of more photos. Roll film replaced photographic plates, freeing photographers from laborious preparations and transitions.5 The new film formats enabled the wide use of modern, small-format cameras like the Leica, which could take pictures in rapid sequence. By1936 LIFE was able to print more pictures more economically by developing cheaper forms of coated stock.6 With Time, Inc.’s advanced distribution capabilities and ongoing improvements in transportation, more photos could be dispersed to more subscribers.
But paper, technology, and cost factors don’t take pictures. Photographers do. And LIFE hired the world’s best. In the early years the new hires included Margaret Bourke-White, Peter Stackpole, and Alfred Eisenstaedt. Later, LIFE photographer giants included Rex Hardy, Gordon Parks, Bill Eppridge, and Larry Burrows, among numerous others. Collectively, their portfolios chronicle the world’s history from the 1930s through the 1970s.
Luce introduced Time magazine’s new sister on November 23, 1936. Even at conception the siblings acted differently. “LIFE was more fun.”7 And their father knew it. Pictures in black and white or in color invited interpretation. Rather than producing posed and stoic portraits, LIFE photographers sought individuals where they labored, loved, and lived. Often they did so without the subject’s knowledge. To create a natural feel in their pictures, LIFE photographers got out of the way. They climbed trees and poles, mixed in with the subject’s peers, or became lost in large crowds. Only the pictures mattered—and, of course, people’s responses to those images.
Margaret Bourke-White’s picture of a dam under construction at Fort Peck, Montana, graced LIFE’s first cover. A picture on the inside cover showed an anonymous child’s birth, with the caption “Life Begins.” It would not be the last time LIFE printed a picture of an unidentified person.
Considering the magazine sold out of all its 250,000 newsstand copies on the first day,8 and commanded an overriding presence throughout the midcentury, one might assume LIFE cornered the market for photo journals. It did not. Many other publications competed for the public’s viewing eye. In Europe, the French Vu, the German Berliner Illustrierte Zietung, and the British Weekly Illustrated captivated the public. In the United States, rivals included National Geographic, Vanity Fair, Collier’s, Liberty, Saturday Evening Post, and Look. In this competitive market, not everyone read, or looked, at LIFE. In fact, only one out of every four Americans “read” LIFE regularly.9 Newspapers and some magazines had greater circulation and a more diverse readership than LIFE. Those who did subscribe to LIFE typically stood on the upper rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.10 The farmer in Montana with dirty fingernails or the fisherman in Rhode Island with sunburned knuckles were less likely to pick up LIFE than the dentist who handled sterilized instruments in Chicago or New York.
But number crunching can mislead. Much of LIFE’s draw, success, and impact defied direct quantification. A single photograph can influence a viewer far more than a “formula driven” newspaper piece.11 While more people might have viewed other media sources, those daily papers and periodicals would be hard, pressed to match LIFE’s eternal imprint on the events and times they depicted. Further, LIFE had a greater “pass-along factor” than other publications.12 After a customer finished his LIFE, he typically didn’t throw it away. Instead, a neighbor or a colleague was given a look. One market survey estimated that each copy of LIFE was seen by seventeen people.13 By 1956, at its peak, LIFE’s pass-along factor numbered seventy-five million or more.14 Also, though not everyone subscribed to LIFE, those who did—lawyers, politicians, and educators—enjoyed considerable influence. Given their professions, they were likely to share what they saw with many people. LIFE subscribers often opened conversations with, “Did you see that picture in LIFE?” Further still, the keeper factor enhanced LIFE’s standing among other publications. Unlike newspapers, people did not throw out their LIFE magazines at the end of every week. Even forty years after the last LIFE entered circulation, the photo journal continues to sell on eBay, in yard sales, and in consignment shops. Many continue to collect LIFE magazines. All these factors demonstrate LIFE’s reach stretched far beyond its subscription rates, which numbered respectably in the millions nationwide.
Those who viewed LIFE’s pictures did not always see the pictures the same way. Their vantage point determined their interpretation. Sometimes they spied the photo as if from behind a distant window with no connection to the subject. Such viewings tended to amuse. At other times, up close, the subscriber saw hauntingly familiar images. And at special times, a published still photo conveyed motion and froze the viewer. Though rare, those printed pages caused the spectator to feel. And whether he laughed, wept, cursed, or just gazed, he never forgot what he saw. For thirty-six years and through 1,864 consecutive issues, purchasers turned LIFE’s pages in search of such images.
As early as the Great Depression, LIFE established an “iconic presence and cultural prestige.”15 The “Show-Book of the World” stitched itself into the fabric of the times it photographed. LIFE fortified that standing during World War II. During that war the photo journal’s willing cooperation with the national government’s war efforts, including censorship, bordered on collaboration. Ten days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Henry Luce communicated to President Roosevelt, “In the days to come—far beyond strict compliance with whatever rules may be laid down for us by the necessities of war—we can think of no greater happiness than to be of service to any branch of our government and to its armed forces. For the dearest wish of all of us is to tell the story of absolute victory under your leadership.”16 Accordingly, LIFE obliged the Office of War Information’s prohibition of published pictures of American war dead until 1943. Afterward, they agreed to show dead Americans (but not their faces) to help jump-start the waning war bond drive.17
Cooperation with the government proved good for business at LIFE. During Word War II the magazine’s circulation boomed. One might say, “World War II was made for LIFE.”18 At the very least, they enjoyed a fruitful marriage. During the war, LIFE became the era’s most important picture magazine.19 Many of the publication’s photographs depicted women—mothers, wives, and girlfriends—waiting anxiously for their courageous men to return from war. Interspersed with patriotic photographs, stories, and advertisements, the propaganda heightened the anticipation of the soldiers’ and sailors’ return to America. As 1945 progressed, many imagined what that reunion might feel like.
Of course, in addition to propaganda and patriotism, LIFE photographed the most upsetting aspects of war, producing images that affected people deeply. In 1995 Frederick Ivor-Campbell of Warren, Rhode Island, attributed his “lifelong abhorrence of cruelty and violence” to his “early exposure” to LIFE’s published photographs of the Bataan Death March fifty years earlier.20 Another viewer, Gordon Liddy, credited LIFE’s full-page photo of three dead American soldiers on the beach at Buna, New Guinea, printed in September 1943, for “hardening the wartime resolve of the American people.”21 LIFE’s World War II photos informed and affected people’s remembrances of the era.
During the postwar period, which commenced on August 14, 1945, LIFE’s reach lengthened further still. The published pictures of the era chronicled the political, sports, and entertainment worlds, and the American family’s backyards. According to John Loengard, a former LIFE photographer, “By 1960 it seemed that almost everyone had been photographed by LIFE at least once. Anyone at the time might know somebody who knew somebody else—whose face had actually appeared in the magazine.”22 And so it was.
Arguably, LIFE sometimes went over the top to get everyone’s picture. In one particularly controversial piece, LIFE instructed wives how to undress in front of their husbands. And, yes, of course, pictures told the story. Another, interestingly, less-upsetting feature for LIFE readers celebrated the power of the A-bomb and warned of the dangerous new world that lay ahead. Between photo essays on women undressing and bombs dropping, LIFE sold Cadillac cars, Camel cigarettes, and Coca-Cola. Like the magazine’s stories, the advertisements enticed viewers with pictures.
It seemed LIFE appeared everywhere, but not forever. By the time John F. Kennedy became president the media market had changed. Instead of subjects wondering, “Will the picture be in next week?” they were increasingly more interested in knowing, “Will we be on at 5 or 11?”23 By 1960, television established itself in households across the United States. The magazine market, later to be followed by the newspaper beat, lost subscribers. But LIFE went down swinging. Remaining more popular than many of its competitors, LIFE never succumbed to TV. When LIFE ceased weekly publication in 1972, the magazine bowed to niche publication markets, not the boob tube.24 But, of course, the passing of the thirty-six-year-old publication giant gave cause for sad reflection. At the news conference announcing the end, Andrew Heiskell, LIFE’s chairman of the board, fought tears and offered, “I’m only sad that with such a record of achievement LIFE should have such a short life.”25
During the years that followed, efforts to resurrect LIFE paid the former publication the ultimate compliment. In 1978 the photo journal reappeared as a smaller-sized monthly magazine, which ran through March 2000. Later, LIFE reappeared as a newspaper insert. Over the years, Time Life published special-edition magazines and books. Many of those publications reprinted older photos from LIFE magazine. Some of those photographs reappeared often. One photo of a sailor kissing a nurse at the end of World War II graced the pages of those publications more than any other. Most recently, starting in March 2009, LIFE published a large interactive website, hosted and promoted by Google. Once again, the publication remains all about the pictures.
But LIFE as Americans once knew it no longer exists. Even though no one wanted the old publication to go, even LIFE can’t be raised from the dead. So remembering must do. Thanks to old copies stored in people’s attics, and pictures that are republished to this day, we can still see what Henry Luce envisioned almost a century ago. And whether the image captures children watching a puppet show, a marching band leader kicking up his leg with an impromptu parade behind him, or a sailor kissing a “nurse” on the day World War II ended, because of LIFE we can always visit a time and place preserved forever by a sharp-eyed photographer.