One of the biggest photo collections in the world that ranges from the 1880s through to the seminal moments of the 20th century and on into the present day was made available to the public online Tuesday. The bulk of the archive is from Life magazine, the premier platform for photojournalists in the 20th century. About 10m images will eventually be available, from Marilyn Monroe and JFK to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. About 97 percent of the pictures have never been seen before. Google announced Tuesday it had done a deal with Life to put their pictures online. Also available is work from other archives, much of it collected by the former Time publisher Henry Luce. About 20 percent of the collection went online Tuesday. Dawn Bridges, a spokeswoman for TimeInc, said that the archives in their entirety would be available in the first quarter of next year. She said it would not just be historical. Life magazine is defunct but lives on on the internet as Life.com. Millions of images have been scanned and made available on Google Image Search.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/nov/19/life-magazine-photo-archives-google
