What do you think?
Rate this book
Life: The Classic Collection
Quite often a LIFE book will, in words and particularly in pictures, tell a narrative tale. It will also surprise and delight the reader with rarely or never-before seen photos - images that, when we came upon them here in the office, delighted and surprised even us.
This is not that kind of book.
It is, we hope, and entirely new and exciting kind of LIFE book.
You have certainly seen many if no most of the photographs to be presented in these pages. They include our most famous or beautiful images. All of the ones you might want to revisit are here in this collection of 100 Classics: the sailor kissing the nurse, Madonna kissing her own image, McArthur coming ashore, Jackie Robinson coming round third base, the Fab Four in a swimming pool, the Mercury Seven in their spacesuits, Lady Di on her wedding day, the fearsome monkey rising out of the water, the gentle policeman helping out the little boy. The war photography is here, the portraits of Hollywood's kings and queens are here, the funny photos that, through the decades, graced LIFE's back page are here as well. All of the famous photographers - Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, Carl Mydans, Larry Burrows, Philippe Halsman, Ralph Morse, John Leongard, Nina Leen, John Dominis and on and on - are represented.
But they are represented in an entirely new way. They are presented in an entirely new way.
Their photographs have earned the right to stand on their own, apart from any text or magazine layout. Originally created to help tell a journalistic story, they have, quite rightly, come to be recognised as independent works of art. And here they are displayed as such, cleanly and in an oversized format. Certainly the necessary information concerning what's happening in the pictures (and what was going on behind the scenes when the pictures were made) is in this book. But it is unobtrusively separate, and the photographs are allowed to sing as they've never sung before.
Twenty-five of them are included as removable prints suitable for framing: a Classic Collection within the larger Collection, a deluxe innovation in this new kind of book.
So here you have these inarguably beautiful artefacts - the prints to be treasured forever, and the book itself to grace your coffee table. In these pages is the best of LIFE magazine and - and is clear in many of these heroic. lovely or simply touching photographs - the best of life itself.
This is not that kind of book.
It is, we hope, and entirely new and exciting kind of LIFE book.
You have certainly seen many if no most of the photographs to be presented in these pages. They include our most famous or beautiful images. All of the ones you might want to revisit are here in this collection of 100 Classics: the sailor kissing the nurse, Madonna kissing her own image, McArthur coming ashore, Jackie Robinson coming round third base, the Fab Four in a swimming pool, the Mercury Seven in their spacesuits, Lady Di on her wedding day, the fearsome monkey rising out of the water, the gentle policeman helping out the little boy. The war photography is here, the portraits of Hollywood's kings and queens are here, the funny photos that, through the decades, graced LIFE's back page are here as well. All of the famous photographers - Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, Carl Mydans, Larry Burrows, Philippe Halsman, Ralph Morse, John Leongard, Nina Leen, John Dominis and on and on - are represented.
But they are represented in an entirely new way. They are presented in an entirely new way.
Their photographs have earned the right to stand on their own, apart from any text or magazine layout. Originally created to help tell a journalistic story, they have, quite rightly, come to be recognised as independent works of art. And here they are displayed as such, cleanly and in an oversized format. Certainly the necessary information concerning what's happening in the pictures (and what was going on behind the scenes when the pictures were made) is in this book. But it is unobtrusively separate, and the photographs are allowed to sing as they've never sung before.
Twenty-five of them are included as removable prints suitable for framing: a Classic Collection within the larger Collection, a deluxe innovation in this new kind of book.
So here you have these inarguably beautiful artefacts - the prints to be treasured forever, and the book itself to grace your coffee table. In these pages is the best of LIFE magazine and - and is clear in many of these heroic. lovely or simply touching photographs - the best of life itself.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published October 21, 2008
3 people are currently reading
79 people want to read
About the author
Robert Sullivan
153 books77 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Robert Sullivan is the author of Rats, The Meadowlands, A Whale Hunt, and most recently, The Thoreau You Don’t Know. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York magazine, A Public Space, and Vogue, where he is a contributing editor. He was born in Manhattan and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/robert...
Robert Sullivan is the author of Rats, The Meadowlands, A Whale Hunt, and most recently, The Thoreau You Don’t Know. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York magazine, A Public Space, and Vogue, where he is a contributing editor. He was born in Manhattan and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/robert...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 11, 2017
This is a sumptuous volume of photographs from the annals of LIFE magazine.
Henry Luce, LIFE's founder, in his prospectus in the early 1930s stated, somewhat verbosely, of the magazine's purpose, 'To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things - machines, armies, multitudes, shadows of the jungle and on the moon; to see man's work - his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed ... To see, and to be shown is now the will and new expectancy of half mankind. To see and to show is the mission now, for the first time, undertaken by a new kind of publication, SCOPE, The Show-Book of the World ...'
By the time of the magazine's launch on 19 November 1936 it had been renamed LIFE and in this gallery of the '100 Greatest Pictures' one can see that most of those stated objectives have been achieved. And accompanying the photographs are notes which tell of the photographer and also relates a little background into the photograph's taking.
The 'People' section starts off the book and the first face we encounter is that of Louis Armstrong, photographed by Philippe Halsman in 1966 for the cover of LIFE. There is an alluring photograph of Rita Hayworth from 1941 which was taken by Bob Landry while on wartime duty and the photograph allegedly 'stayed in the hearts and (well maybe) the minds of American GIs for the duration'. Interestingly Orson Welles saw it in LIFE and vowed to marry the starlet - and he did!
Such as Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Ghandi, The Beatles in a Miami Beach swimming pool, Marilyn Monroe, a rugged looking Gary Cooper, Pablo Picasso, sketching with a penlight, and Brooklyn Dodger's player Jackie Robinson, the first black player in the Major Leagues, captured during Brooklyn's World Series victory over the New York Yankees in 1955 are are among other superb images.
Under 'Places', perhaps the most spectacular photograph is by Oscar Graubner as he captured fellow photographer Margaret Bourke-White precariously perched atop the 61st-floor gargoyles of the Chrysler Building in 1935, readying her own camera for some other long-distance shots. Less dramatic but equally alluring is a view of Route 66, all sky and road, at Seligman, Arizona, and Elliot Elisofon's 'Tahiti', a pleasurable side/back view of a lady bathing nude that was initially used in an article entitled 'Storied Isles of Romance in the South Seas' in 1955 and latterly used as cover art on New Order's single 'Waiting for the Sirens' Call' in 2005.
'Moments' includes photographs that are eyewitness to great events and also that see strange things. The most poignant photograph is probably by Joe McNally entitled 'Faces of Ground Zero' and pictures the three Gleason brothers, Patrick, 'working when the alarm came in', Richard, 'off duty' and Peter' 'retired'. All three responded to the call and are shown grimy but unbowed after their efforts at the site.
Two small children are pictured from behind, hand in hand, in a charming image entitled 'The Walk to Paradise Garden' which features the photographer's, W Eugene Smith, son and daughter walking from shade to sunlight in their home at Paradise, New York. Representing wartime, there is a shot of the Korean War in 1950 in which the strain of fighting is shown dramatically on the face of a US Marine and, horrifyingly, a photograph of the ambush at Mutter's Ridge, South Vietnam, in 1966.
Co Rentmeester's marvellous photograph of a so-called Snow Monkey, a Japanese macaque, emerging from a hot spring in Shiga Kogen shows how wily are these animals. Living in the far north in the mountains around Honshu, they prove that they certainly know where to get warm as they leave their domain where temperatures often fall to zero and below for warmer climes! And, on the animal front, there is a tremendous photograph of a sleeping lion that brought photographer John Dominis many laurels as part of his series of two seminal photo essays on very different kinds of cats - the other subject, none other than Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra! Cat?
The final section is entitled 'The Sunny Side of Life' and the most wacky of the photographs is probably J R Eyerman's 'Life in 3-D' of 1952. It is an elevated view of the a large section of the audience, all suitably attired in 3-D glasses, at the Paramount Theater during the premiere of the first full-length 3-D motion picture, which was the very, to be polite, non-classic 'Bwana Devil'. Eyerman's photograph produces an image every bit as scary and bizarre as the film!
Another somewhat bizarre offering is Joe Munroe's photograph of 22 male students from Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California, squeezing into a telephone booth; unfortunately they could not beat the South African attempt in which 25 college students set the world record! And keeping up with the bizarre theme, Allan Grant provides us with 'You May Kiss the Bride' from 1946. Grant was well known for his dramatic pictures of bomb testing in the Nevada desert but this one depicts the more light-hearted side of life as it shows Yoanda Cosmar and 'Mad Marshall' Jacobs exchanging a kiss after their blissful nuptials - their location? ... atop a flagpole in Coshocton, Ohio! Precarious to say the least!
There are plenty more exhilarating photographs to admire and the stories behind them all make for interesting reading and together they provide a first-class book for one's library.
Henry Luce, LIFE's founder, in his prospectus in the early 1930s stated, somewhat verbosely, of the magazine's purpose, 'To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things - machines, armies, multitudes, shadows of the jungle and on the moon; to see man's work - his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed ... To see, and to be shown is now the will and new expectancy of half mankind. To see and to show is the mission now, for the first time, undertaken by a new kind of publication, SCOPE, The Show-Book of the World ...'
By the time of the magazine's launch on 19 November 1936 it had been renamed LIFE and in this gallery of the '100 Greatest Pictures' one can see that most of those stated objectives have been achieved. And accompanying the photographs are notes which tell of the photographer and also relates a little background into the photograph's taking.
The 'People' section starts off the book and the first face we encounter is that of Louis Armstrong, photographed by Philippe Halsman in 1966 for the cover of LIFE. There is an alluring photograph of Rita Hayworth from 1941 which was taken by Bob Landry while on wartime duty and the photograph allegedly 'stayed in the hearts and (well maybe) the minds of American GIs for the duration'. Interestingly Orson Welles saw it in LIFE and vowed to marry the starlet - and he did!
Such as Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Ghandi, The Beatles in a Miami Beach swimming pool, Marilyn Monroe, a rugged looking Gary Cooper, Pablo Picasso, sketching with a penlight, and Brooklyn Dodger's player Jackie Robinson, the first black player in the Major Leagues, captured during Brooklyn's World Series victory over the New York Yankees in 1955 are are among other superb images.
Under 'Places', perhaps the most spectacular photograph is by Oscar Graubner as he captured fellow photographer Margaret Bourke-White precariously perched atop the 61st-floor gargoyles of the Chrysler Building in 1935, readying her own camera for some other long-distance shots. Less dramatic but equally alluring is a view of Route 66, all sky and road, at Seligman, Arizona, and Elliot Elisofon's 'Tahiti', a pleasurable side/back view of a lady bathing nude that was initially used in an article entitled 'Storied Isles of Romance in the South Seas' in 1955 and latterly used as cover art on New Order's single 'Waiting for the Sirens' Call' in 2005.
'Moments' includes photographs that are eyewitness to great events and also that see strange things. The most poignant photograph is probably by Joe McNally entitled 'Faces of Ground Zero' and pictures the three Gleason brothers, Patrick, 'working when the alarm came in', Richard, 'off duty' and Peter' 'retired'. All three responded to the call and are shown grimy but unbowed after their efforts at the site.
Two small children are pictured from behind, hand in hand, in a charming image entitled 'The Walk to Paradise Garden' which features the photographer's, W Eugene Smith, son and daughter walking from shade to sunlight in their home at Paradise, New York. Representing wartime, there is a shot of the Korean War in 1950 in which the strain of fighting is shown dramatically on the face of a US Marine and, horrifyingly, a photograph of the ambush at Mutter's Ridge, South Vietnam, in 1966.
Co Rentmeester's marvellous photograph of a so-called Snow Monkey, a Japanese macaque, emerging from a hot spring in Shiga Kogen shows how wily are these animals. Living in the far north in the mountains around Honshu, they prove that they certainly know where to get warm as they leave their domain where temperatures often fall to zero and below for warmer climes! And, on the animal front, there is a tremendous photograph of a sleeping lion that brought photographer John Dominis many laurels as part of his series of two seminal photo essays on very different kinds of cats - the other subject, none other than Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra! Cat?
The final section is entitled 'The Sunny Side of Life' and the most wacky of the photographs is probably J R Eyerman's 'Life in 3-D' of 1952. It is an elevated view of the a large section of the audience, all suitably attired in 3-D glasses, at the Paramount Theater during the premiere of the first full-length 3-D motion picture, which was the very, to be polite, non-classic 'Bwana Devil'. Eyerman's photograph produces an image every bit as scary and bizarre as the film!
Another somewhat bizarre offering is Joe Munroe's photograph of 22 male students from Saint Mary's College in Moraga, California, squeezing into a telephone booth; unfortunately they could not beat the South African attempt in which 25 college students set the world record! And keeping up with the bizarre theme, Allan Grant provides us with 'You May Kiss the Bride' from 1946. Grant was well known for his dramatic pictures of bomb testing in the Nevada desert but this one depicts the more light-hearted side of life as it shows Yoanda Cosmar and 'Mad Marshall' Jacobs exchanging a kiss after their blissful nuptials - their location? ... atop a flagpole in Coshocton, Ohio! Precarious to say the least!
There are plenty more exhilarating photographs to admire and the stories behind them all make for interesting reading and together they provide a first-class book for one's library.
April 23, 2021
A picture—or is this case, 100 pictures—is truly worth a thousand words.
I was first driven towards this book mainly due to the aesthetics that a collection of 100 great classic photographs in high quality large prints seemed to entail. However, I find myself moved and quite tearful as I flip through the pages. Some, especially pictures of the war are brutally honest and hard to look at. Others are funny, heartwarming, and hopeful. Some of my favorites are:
- The Taj Mahal (1967)
- Buchenwald (1945)
- The American Way (1937)
- Among the Mourners (1945)
- Reaching Out (1966)
- Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath (1971)
- Huck Finn in the Flesh (1945)
- Don’t Worry! The Duck’s Fine! (1949)
And of course, the all-time classic: V-J Day, 1945, Times Square
I was first driven towards this book mainly due to the aesthetics that a collection of 100 great classic photographs in high quality large prints seemed to entail. However, I find myself moved and quite tearful as I flip through the pages. Some, especially pictures of the war are brutally honest and hard to look at. Others are funny, heartwarming, and hopeful. Some of my favorites are:
- The Taj Mahal (1967)
- Buchenwald (1945)
- The American Way (1937)
- Among the Mourners (1945)
- Reaching Out (1966)
- Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath (1971)
- Huck Finn in the Flesh (1945)
- Don’t Worry! The Duck’s Fine! (1949)
And of course, the all-time classic: V-J Day, 1945, Times Square
November 17, 2008
This book was full of beautiful, classic photos of Americana. Some were, of course, very famous, while others surprised me. For example, the portrait of Marliyn Monroe in the ballerina dress was actually shot for Life magazine and then secretly sold by the photographers' son to the government of Poland. The horror of war and the glory of Camelot were both represented as well. I loved the picture of Jack and Jackie on the yacht before they were married. The picture of Bobby lying in his own blood after being shot in the hotel was paralyzing. The book ended with its most famous picture... VJ Day, Times Square, 1945. 25 of the pictures are actually prints that can be removed from the book and framed. VJ Day is one of them.
February 25, 2009
The book you think you'll just flip through before starting on what you're supposed to be doing, but instead you look at every single photo and read the story of each one, struck by how little we used to wear when we went skiing, and how dead people look, and geez, how many of these are by Gordon Parks! and you keep going, because the layout lets the book act as an iconic image literacy quiz. And you like the one of the dog with the duck in its mouth the best.
May 6, 2014
I loved this book being a photographer myself. It is filled with iconic images, but it also puts the photos into context. You get to hear from the photographers about each situation and the subjects of the images as well.
It's a well put together book and when you purchase it you also are given 25 prints inside of the book which can be removed and framed.
It's a good read and buy.
It's a well put together book and when you purchase it you also are given 25 prints inside of the book which can be removed and framed.
It's a good read and buy.
September 14, 2016
Life is a little better having seen these photographs.
A photograph can tell us stories. The best reading is re-reading. I say a good photograph can never finish telling its stories. I absolutely adore the snow monkey photo and Madonna kissing herself in the mirror. A gem.
A photograph can tell us stories. The best reading is re-reading. I say a good photograph can never finish telling its stories. I absolutely adore the snow monkey photo and Madonna kissing herself in the mirror. A gem.
January 8, 2009
The best birthday present I ever bought for myself! I know it's kitschy, but the photo of the sailor bending the girl over in a kiss on V-J Day is pure joy caught on film.
August 30, 2010
A varied collection of photos, including prints that can be removed and framed. I enjoyed it.
August 11, 2011
A great book of timeless photographs and captions explaining each one.
January 5, 2015
The stories behind these iconic "Life" magazine photos are so intriguing! Beautifully done! This book would be a great gift to the photog in your "life"!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews