The Motherlode of Inspirational Pictures?

Posted by Scalzi about 1 year ago | Permalink | Comments (3)

You know, it wasn’t until last week that I realized that Life magazine, which has had an on-again, off-again publication history since the 70s, was now on again, and being distributed through newspapers. Now it’s off again: They’re stopping the physical print run, although they’re going to be keeping it active online.

But here’s the _really_interesting thing from the story:

Time will make Life’s collection of 10 million images available online, with “the most important collection of imagery covering the events and people of the 20th century” available for free for personal use, it said.

The public has never seen more than 97 percent of the collection, which includes pictures by Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White and Gordon Parks, Time said.

Wow. Just, wow. If this is true, not only will this (as hinted above) be a great inspirational tool for writing (which is the tie-in for our humble site), but it’ll also a simply amazing historical trove to wander through. All of the 20th Century, in photographic form.

AOL and Life are corporate cousins; I gotta see who I can talk to see if we can use that databank of photos here.

Comments

  1. SJHundak/S.J.Willing's Buddy IconSJHundak/S.J.Willing

    Posted about 1 year ago

    ten million photos…. lol how long would that take to look through? How many hours, days weeks could be lost in that treasury.

    Dang it, there’s another ficlet coming on…

    :)

    S.J.

  2. SJHundak/S.J.Willing's Buddy IconSJHundak/S.J.Willing

    Posted about 1 year ago

    As a little off topic aside, does anyone know of any good ficlet ten step programmes… I can’t seem to get out of the site…

    Well, not without the tremors starting.

    :)
    S.J.

  3. Kevin Lawver's Buddy IconKevin Lawver

    Posted about 1 year ago

    We can definitely try to get them to release the photos under a CC license, but I seriously doubt it will happen.