Life Is A Magazine, Chum...

August 9, 2002 1:05 AM

Life Is A Magazine, Chum... Come to the Magazine! A lot of us grew up with Life Magazine and there's a certain nostalgic/narcissistic pleasure in looking at the cover of the week you (if you're over 30, that is) or your parents were born in. Their wacky and classic covers are also worth checking out, even though there are some inevitable repeats. Oh - and never forgetting their astonishing classic photographs, of course.
posted by MiguelCardoso (18 comments total)

Thank you. I love these photos. The WWII shots are always informative and sometimes bizarre, but make me long for the days when "photojournalism" was more than the action shot.
posted by readymade at 2:24 AM on August 9, 2002

Sweet. I was prepared for the crusty visage of Westmoreland or something...
posted by jalexei at 4:34 AM on August 9, 2002

thanks miguel! life's photos are the touchstone of an entire generation. several generations, probably.
posted by quonsar at 4:44 AM on August 9, 2002

That was fun. Unfortunately, there's no nostalgia possible for my birth week.
posted by wheat at 4:55 AM on August 9, 2002

This was allowed in the 50s?
posted by psychotic_venom at 5:31 AM on August 9, 2002

i inherited a fantastic collection of old life magazines from my irish catholic grandmother when she died. why do i mention her ethnicity? because one man figures prominently in the collection. from his time as a senator to the birth of his son to his inauguration as president to his wife's 'plans for the white house' (one of my favorites) to his shocking assassination to the classic funeral and even the questions of conspiracy that followed, i've got the complete 'kennedy collection'.

probably worth something on ebay, but far too cool to ever sell.
posted by mlang at 5:34 AM on August 9, 2002

Thank you, Miguel. I really miss Life and Look Magazine, as well. There doesn't seem to be anything quite like these two available today, although Picture Magazine comes closest.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:29 AM on August 9, 2002

Heh. My birth week.

I will expect to have this mentioned appropriately, Migs.
posted by yhbc at 7:32 AM on August 9, 2002

Hard to believe, but there was a time when we didn't have teevee or this inturnet thinger. We had to rely on newspapers and radio for news, and to Life and Look for visuals. As I recall we would start out for town at 1 am, arriving 24 hours later if there weren't any snowstorms. Then we would find work for a couple days to pay for a week old copy of Life. The trip home took three days because we had to stop at all the other farms and share the magazine with friends and neighbors who would load us up with sacks of grain and sides of beef. Us kids never got to read the magazine because as soon as we arrived home it was time to leave for town to get the next week old copy. God, I miss those days!
posted by Mack Twain at 9:46 AM on August 9, 2002

Luxury!
posted by soundofsuburbia at 9:55 AM on August 9, 2002

Mack, your online time is up, get downstairs NOW and take out the trash!
Dad.
posted by HTuttle at 10:33 AM on August 9, 2002

Before I'm off into the night, I'd just like to thank Miguel for making me remember just how amazing Lennart Nilsson's photos are. Thank you.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 10:44 AM on August 9, 2002

Doing some research for something else, in our college library's old bound volumes, I was rather surprised to see ca. 1954 a small featurette on "the newest college craze": parties where you had to find the person dressed as the opposite sex in the dark. They used an infrared camera to record a bunch of game dorm denizens, one fratboy sheepishly grinning in the girl's dress, with coconuts in the bra, and the girl in his checked flannel shirt and denim trousers, looking quite modern but for her hairstyle. Somehow in the six frames or so that they showed, in which both transvestites were discovered, there was nothing beyond a PG rating -- but a couple of issues later the magazine ran several irate letters, and an abject apology. Somewhere, I have xeroxes of the whole thing.

It does seem that improved cost structures for photographic printing allowed all their competitors in the weekly market -- TIME; People; hell, TV Guide -- to eliminate their raison d'etre.
posted by dhartung at 1:06 PM on August 9, 2002

The week of my birth...shoulda been a sign.
posted by jonmc at 1:30 PM on August 9, 2002

My birth week: Indian soldier wields bazooka in Kashmir. "Shock of a new war."

Almost 37 years later, and they still haven't worked it out. The more things change...

Hey, how come Miguel gets a hottie and I get a reminder of the viciousness of human nature? Ok, I ran my girlfriend's and got Jane Fonda as Barbarella. Now I feel better.
posted by alex_reno at 1:32 PM on August 9, 2002

My birth week, featuring Western Ways Jolt the Arabs, part two in this series.

Some things will never change, apparently.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:44 PM on August 9, 2002

The picture from my birthweek is somewhat surreal (it figures). Does anyone know what CLEAM.MEAT means? Or if thats what it says?
posted by vacapinta at 5:27 PM on August 9, 2002

Those are Ns, with an elevated crossbar. A feature found in certain 1920s / decorative fonts. So it's CLEAN. NEAT. Values of order which would appeal both to Vietnamese and Communists.

Me? Framed by a somber pair. I was born two and a half weeks prematurely.
posted by dhartung at 12:33 AM on August 10, 2002