#Life magazine

[thepopculturearchivist]

The anti-social media of a century past. LIFE, December 23, 1926

[inthedarktrees]

Ballerinas standing on window sill in rehearsal room at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life, 1936

[grundoonmgnx]

ph. Nina Leen for Life Magazine, Legs, which always give trouble, sprawl in aisle at the movies, 1945

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Marilyn Monroe (1952)

[wh0-is-lily]

Marilyn Monroe in, "The Hat Sitting," for LIFE Magazine, June 1958 Photography by Carl Perutz in New York, NYC

[thecinamonroe]

Marilyn Monroe posing as Clara Bow for Life Magazine's December 22nd issue, 1958. Photo by Richard Avedon.

[desireswithingirls]

3D movie watching circa 1950s

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Life magazine, September 28, 1928. Cover art by Russell Patterson.

Photo: Condé Nast  Store

[mote-historie]

Frank Xavier Leyendecker, Life Magazine cover, The Flapper, 2. February 1922

[twixnmix]

Marilyn Monroe photographed by Richard Avedon as Theda Bara in "Cleopatra" (1917) for LIFE magazine, 1958.

[65eatonplace]

Sharon Tate by Bill Ray, London UK 1968

[uwmspeccoll]

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Celebrating Artist Gordon Parks!

In a 2001 interview with the oral history project The History Makers, American photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was asked to define his profession: “I think I was an artist,” he says, “photographer, writer, painter, poet, film director, and a lover.” He laughs. “Renaissance man. That’s what we call a lover” He might’ve added musician, composer, and documentarian. Parks was born in Kansas in 1912, left home at fifteen after the death of his mother, played piano and sang in brothels for money, worked in a Chicago flop house after the stock market crash, and found himself inspired by FSA photographs in the 1930s. After receiving work as a commercial photographer, he won a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship for his work documenting Chicago’s South Side, and was invited to join the Farm Security Administration himself.

The photographs highlighted here are drawn from his work at this early point in his long and dynamic career. They are reprinted in the 2018 book Gordon Parks : The New Tide, Early Work, 1940-1950, edited by Philip Brookman, consulting curator of photography at the National Gallery of Art. The book captures Parks’ work in and out of commercial photography, government projects, celebrity profiles, and his early years with LIFE magazine – where he would work until it stopped monthly publication in 1972. Parks was known for earning the trust of his subjects, and not betraying it. In a remembrance of Parks by one of his former editors at LIFE, Barbara Baker Burrows recalls Parks’ charm, and the confidence he earned, whether he was capturing foreign militaries, street gangs, celebrities, or civil servants. Parks died in 2006 at the age of 93.

For more about Gordon Parks and his legacy, visit The Gordon Parks Foundation.

See more Black History Month posts.

--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[inthedarktrees]

Howard Sochurek, “Prayer Marathon in Memphis,” Life, 1952

[70sgroovy]

high schoolers photographed by arthur schatz for life magazine, 1969

[wh0-is-lily]

'Summer Underwear' for LIFE Magazine⁣, 1949 Photography by Nina Leen

[jedivoodoochile]