Aerial photographs of Los Angeles by Michael Light
4 DecThe Best of LIFE: 37 Years in Pictures
19 Sep
“Over several decades spanning the heart of the 20th century, one American magazine ― called, plainly and boldly, LIFE ― published an astonishing number of the most memorable photographs ever made. Driven by the certainty that the art of photojournalism could tell stories and move people in ways that traditional reporting simply could not.”
CULTURE
1936 – 1972
- 1971 | Challenger Muhammad Ali taunts heavyweight champ Joe Frazier at Frazier’s training camp in Pennsylvania ahead of their March 1971 “Fight of the Century” title bout at Madison Square Garden. Frazier retained the championship belt in a unanimous 15-round decision. Originally published in the March 5, 1971, issue of LIFE.
- 1969 | Concert-goers huddle under a sheet of cardboard in the rain at the three-day, era-defining Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, New York. Originally published in the August 29, 1969, issue of LIFE.
- 1968 | Senator Robert Kennedy lies in a pool of his own blood on the floor of the kitchen at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel, June 5, 1968, after being shot by Jordanian-born assassin Sirhan Sirhan. A dazed, frightened hotel busboy, Juan Romero, tries to comfort the mortally wounded presidential candidate, who died hours later. Robert Kennedy was 42 years old. Originally published in the June 14, 1968, issue of LIFE.
- 1967 | A leopard, seconds away from killing a terrified baboon, in a hair-raising picture that was, photographer John Dominis admits, entirely staged. Originally published in the January 6, 1967, issue of LIFE.
- 1963 | New York Commuters read of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, November 1963. This Carl Mydans photo did not appear in LIFE when the magazine published as a weekly, but has been printed in later books.
- 1962 | Shot for LIFE by photographer Bill Ray in May 1962, this now-iconic image of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden never appeared in the weekly magazine.
- 1960 | In a Los Angeles hotel suite, John F. Kennedy confers with his brother and campaign manager Bobby during the Democratic National Convention, at which JFK was picked as the 1960 party nominee. Originally published in the July 25, 1960, issue of LIFE.
- 1959 | The Duke and Duchess of Windsor jump for photographer Philippe Halsman. Originally published in the November 9, 1959, issue of LIFE
- 1958 | On the screen of a drive-in theater in Utah, Charlton Heston, as Moses in the The Ten Commandments, throws his arms wide before what appears to be a congregation of cars at prayer. Originally published in the December 22, 1958, issue of LIFE.
- 1956 | “Eyes right” is executed with near-military precision by men aboard a New York-bound 20th Century Limited train as movie star Kim Novak eases into her seat in the dining car. Originally published in the March 5, 1956, issue of LIFE.
- 1955 | Hunkering against the cold and rain, a haunted-looking James Dean strolls through Times Square, mere blocks from the famous Actors Studio where he and other legends-to-be studied “the Method.” Originally published in the March 7, 1955, issue of LIFE.
- 1954 | Light beams create a contour map of a human head during an Air Force study of jet-pilot helmets. Originally published, as the cover image, on the December 6, 1954, issue of LIFE.
- 1953 | Senator John Kennedy and his bride, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, smile during their wedding reception, September 12, 1953, in Newport, Rhode Island. Originally published in the September 26, 1953, issue of LIFE.
- 1952 | Riveted audience members enjoy opening night of the first full-length American 3-D feature film: the Arch Oboler-directed drama, Bwana Devil. Originally published in the December 15, 1952, issue of LIFE.
- 1951 | In the single most famous image from W. Eugene Smith’s magisterial photo essay, “Spanish Village,” the faces of three members of dictator Francisco Franco’s feared Guardia Civil evince the arrogance often assumed by small men granted great power over others. Originally published in the April 9, 1951, issue of LIFE.
- 1950 | Early in the Korean War, American Marines march through bitter cold down a canyon road they dubbed “Nightmare Alley” during a grim retreat from the Chosin Reservoir. Originally published in the December 25, 1950, issue of LIFE.
- 1948 | Dr. Ernest Ceriani, a general practitioner in tiny Kremmling, Colorado, stands in the town’s hospital kitchen after a surgery that lasted until 2 AM. This was the final image in W. Eugene Smith’s groundbreaking photo essay, “Country Doctor,” originally published in the September 20, 1948, issue of LIFE.
- 1947 | Heavyweight champ Joe Louis lies on the canvas at (the old, original) Madison Square Garden in New York after being floored by contender Jersey Joe Walcott in a December 1947 title match. Louis came back to win by a controversial decision. Originally published in the December 15, 1947 issue of LIFE.
- 1946 | LIFE photographer W. Eugene Smith’s children, Juanita and Patrick, walk hand-in-hand into a clearing in 1946. The photo was the closing image in Edward Steichen’s now-legendary 1955 MoMA exhibition, The Family of Man, and was one of the very first that Smith, wounded while working in the Pacific in World War II, made after the war.
- 1943 | Professional dancers Willa Mae Ricker and Leon James demonstrate how the Lindy Hop is meant to be danced. Originally published in the August 23, 1943, issue of LIFE.
- 1942 | Row upon row of WACs (Women’s Army Corps members) don gas masks for a training drill at Iowa’s Fort Des Moines. Originally published in the September 7, 1942, issue of LIFE.
- 1941 | Kappa Sigma Epsilon fraternity members toss blankets out the window of their house in preparation for a spring “blanket party” under the stars at Kansas State Teacher’s College. Originally published in the May 26, 1941, issue of LIFE.
- 1940 | A heavily bandaged British infant, Margaret Curtis, badly injured in a German blitzkrieg attack on London during the Battle of Britain. Originally published in the September 9, 1940, issue of LIFE.
- 1939 | Aerial view of a DC-4 passenger plane flying over midtown Manhattan. An almost identical photograph from this shoot was published in the June 19, 1939, issue of LIFE.
- 1938 | President Franklin Roosevelt listens to a speech during the annual Jackson Day fundraising dinner in Washington, DC. Originally published in the January 24, 1938, issue of LIFE.
- 1937 | Astronomer Edwin Hubble peers though the eyepiece of the 100-inch Hooker telescope at California’s Mt. Wilson Observatory. Originally published in the November 8, 1937, issue of LIFE.
- 1936 | On the Cordoba front during the Spanish Civil War, a Loyalist fighter is killed in action in September 1936. Originally published in the July 12, 1937, issue of LIFE.
- 1970 | A crush of straphangers crowds a subway car in Manhattan. Originally published in the January 9, 1970, issue of LIFE.
- 1966 | Wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (center) moves to try and comfort a stricken comrade after a fierce firefight during the Vietnam War. Photographed for an essay that ran in the October 28, 1966, issue of LIFE, this Larry Burrows picture — now regarded as one of the handful of utterly indispensable images from the war — did not appear in the magazine until February 1971.
- 1965 | In one of the most eloquent photographs ever made of a great athlete in decline, Yankee star Mickey Mantle flings his batting helmet away in disgust after another terrible at-bat near the end of his storied, injury-plagued career. Originally published in the July 30, 1965, issue of LIFE.
- 1964 | Four lads from Liverpool — Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr — take a dip in an unheated Miami Beach swimming pool during a cold snap on their first trip to the States. “We could not find a heated pool that could be closed off from the rest of the press,” photographer John Loengard later said of this picture, “so we settled for one that was not … [and they] started turning blue.” Originally published in the February 28, 1964, issue of LIFE.
- 1961 | Freedom Riders Julia Aaron and David Dennis sit aboard an interstate bus as they and 25 other civil rights activists are escorted by Mississippi National Guardsmen on a violence-marred trip between Montgomery, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi. Originally published in the June 2, 1961, issue of LIFE.
- 1957 | Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at the landmark Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, DC, one of the earliest mass rallies of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Paul Schutzer took this photograph in 1957, but it did not appear in LIFE until the April 12, 1968, issue — one week after Dr. King was assassinated.
- 1949 | Pablo Picasso drafts a centaur in mid-air with a “light pen” in southeastern France. Originally published in the January 30, 1950, issue of LIFE.
- 1945 | On August 14, 1945 — VJ Day — a jubilant sailor plants a kiss on a nurse in Times Square to celebrate the Allies’ long- awaited World War II victory over Japan. Originally published (not as a cover shot, as most people assume today, but as just one in a series of “VJ Day victory celebration” images featured in the middle of the magazine) in the August 27, 1945, issue of LIFE.
- 1944 | In the face of devastating German fire, American troops land at Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Originally published in the June 19, 1944, issue of LIFE.
Nude Body as a Landscape by Allan Teger
6 Aug
Self-taught american photographer allan teger has sent designboom new images from his body of work ‘bodyscapes®’, with a series of black and white photographs depicting miniature scenes on the nude body mimicking various landscapes. the images are not double exposures and uses no digital manipulation, only small scale figures arranged on the naked form to illustrate predominantly outdoor activities, where a belly-button may act as a lake or a sculpted derrière as a mountain.
“Teger was initially trained as a psychologist, with the bodyscapes® concept evolving from his teaching as an academic counselor. Teger would lecture readings on tao te ching, the bhagavad-gita, books by ram Dass, carl rogers, huxley, watts and others. The notions of altered realities, subjective reality, and mystical consciousness became part of his artistic understanding.
Teger describes the development of his work:
‘I remember the moment that the idea for bodyscapes® came to me. I was thinking that the shape and structure of the universe repeated itself at every level and suddenly I had the image in my mind of a skier going down a breast. this was it – the universe repeating its shapes – a body looking like a mountain. it was also an example of two realities coexisting. the picture could be seen as a landscape and it could also be seen as a body. Although they were different, both perceptions were right at the same time. I knew instantly that I had an entire series of images waiting to be captured on film.”
The ongoing project started in 1976, with the set updated regularly to this day, most are shot with a medium format mamiya RB67 and either tri-X or t-max film. The regular edition bodyscapes® are printed on ilford multigrade paper, and the collector’s edition is printed on agfa classic 118 fiber paper. Teger also has a book of the pieces due out in september from schiffer publishing.
SOURCE:
Love Supreme: An Interracial Romance Triumphs in 1960s
12 Jun
On March 18, 1966, LIFE magazine published a feature under the quietly chilling headline, “The Crime of Being Married.” The article, illustrated with photographs by LIFE’s Grey Villet, told the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a married interracial couple battling Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws. Villet’s warm, intimate pictures revealed a close-knit family, including children and grandparents, living their lives in opposition to a patently unjust law — but also captured eloquent moments, gestures and expressions that affirmed just how heavily their defiance weighed on the very private couple.
The LIFE article and Villet’s images, read and viewed today, assume a poignancy and power perhaps unimagined by the magazine’s readers in 1966. The couple, after all, was awaiting an appeal on a court ruling that had, in effect, banished them from their hometown. At the time, the Lovings were adamant (in their own unassuming way) that they had no interest in being cast as Civil Rights heroes. All they wanted was to live their lives and raise their children in peace. But decades later, we know what the people in Villet’s published photographs — a frowning Richard Loving; Mildred Loving, her eyes downcast — might have hoped and prayed for, but could never ultimately count on: namely, that a year later, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court finally and unanimously decided the case of Loving v. Virginia, ruling against the state and finding all anti-miscegenation laws across the country unconstitutional.
Here, on the 45th anniversary of the June 12, 1967, Supreme Court decision that, in effect, codified the right of men and women to simply love whom they choose, LIFE.com presents a gallery of recently rediscovered Grey Villet photographs of the Lovings, their family and their friends, along with the text of the original magazine story (below).
“[Text from the original article from LIFE, March 18, 1966]
“The Crime of Being Married”
She is Negro, he is white, and they are married. This puts them in a kind of legal purgatory in their home state of Virginia, which specifically forbids interracial marriage.
Last week Mildred and Richard Loving lost one more round in a seven-year legal battle, when the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the state’s anti-miscegenation law. Once again they and their three children were faced with the loss of home and livelihood.
Both Lovings were born and raised in the isolated hill country around Caroline County, north of Richmond, where there has always been an easy-going tolerance on the race question. It stirred little fuss when the couple culminated a long and agonized courtship by traveling to Washington, D.C., to get married in 1958. But five weeks later the county sheriff routed them out of bed at 2 a.m. and took them off to jail. A local judge handed down a year’s sentence but suspended it if they agreed to leave the state immediately and stay away for 25 years.
Badly frightened and unaware of their right of appeal, the Lovings lived five years of hand-to-mouth exile in Washington. Even so, they were re-arrested when they returned for a visit to Mildred’s family. Released on bail, they wrote a letter to then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, asking for help. This led the American Civil Liberties Union to take an interest in their case. The Lovings decided to take up permanent residence in Virginia and fight. Now their case will return to federal court — where Loving v. Virginia may well become the next big landmark in civil rights.
Richard and Mildred’s families have lived in Caroline County for generations. They were friends and neighbors when the two were children, and they still are. In fact, Richard’s mother, a licensed midwife, delivered all three of Mildred’s children.
“It never was like a lot of other places,” Richard explains. “It doesn’t matter to folks around here. They just want to live and be left alone. That’s the way I feel.” A family of simple wants and needs, the Lovings keep largely to themselves. Richard keeps busy as a $5-per-hour construction worker. On weekends he likes to go drag racing in a souped-up car, which he owns with two boyhood friends, both Negroes. The Lovings’ white neighbors have grown accustomed to the marriage, and they encounter hostile stares only when they venture away. “It makes me want to ask them what the hell they are staring at,” he says. “I haven’t yet, but once we are allowed to live here legally, I will.”
Virginia is one of 18 states where marriage between Negroes and white persons are forbidden by law. Judge Leon M. Bazile, who originally sentenced the Lovings, later wrote, “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages.”
The Lovings’ lawyers, Philip Hirschkop and Bernard S. Cohen, will base their appeal on the claim the Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statutes violate the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. The State insists that the 14th Amendment exempts anti-miscegenation statutes from its coverage, and that there is no constitutionally protected right of a free choice of a spouse in marriage. Thus, the first issue the Supreme Court will face, if it takes the case, is whether the constitutional rights of the individual override the state’s right to control marriages under the state’s police powers.
Richard and Mildred Loving realize that their fight will undoubtedly affect the lives of many other people if they win; there are probably a half million mixed marriages in the U.S. at present. But the Lovings do not look upon themselves as champions of civil rights.
“We have thought about other people, but we are not doing it just because somebody had to do it and we wanted to be the ones,” says Richards. “We are doing it for us — because we want to live here.”