Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81543 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

Synopsis
This is a volume of living history - the history of our times, as seen by the photographers who captured it. It is the most comprehensive anthology of life photography ever assembled, and illustrates the strengths that made many of these individuals famous - and life great. This book, an enormous international success in hardback, is now available in a new, flexibound format.

Customer Reviews

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.