Instructify

November 26, 2008

Life magazine images

Sometimes it seems as though the main thing kids (and adults) need to learn about history is that it really happened, to real people, people not so different from us. Never in all of history has it been easier to make this point with primary sources, more of which go online every day. One recent historic addition to this global archive at our fingertips is the LIFE magazine photo collection, now on the web courtesy of Google.The front page of the LIFE photo archive gives some terrific introductory browses, by decade or by a few chosen topics. To search only the LIFE photos, you can visit this page or else enter “source:life” in a regular Google Images search. Perhaps best of all, all the pictures seem to be available in large, high-resolution versions, and all of them seem have useful information prominently displayed, such as the date the photograph was taken and the name of the photographer. It would have been nice if copyright information about the photos were as easy to find; under the current copyright laws, it is a fair use for educators to put any of these photos in classroom-only materials, but it’s not clear whether they can be reproduced on an open website or in a book, for instance.

One wonderful thing about the LIFE photos is that they’re works of art as well as of American history; the magazine’s photographers routinely collected entirely justified awards. Some of the gorgeous photos I found by browsing include a picture of a bare-chested Picasso with a flower behind his ear, a picture of children of Japanese ancestry on their way to a WWII internship camp, and a picture of famed socialite and photographer Lee Miller in full soldier kit sitting on a piece of rubble. But why not look around for yourself? A search is worth a thousand words. — AMANDA FRENCH

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

View historical photos from the 1900s at Shorpy

Browse original historical documents for free with Footnote

Google plans to digitize newspapers