We’re excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.
Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.
It has been a thrill for us to explore this archive, filled with images captured by LIFE’s famous photographers. See masters like Alfred Eisenstaedt and Margaret Bourke-White documenting pivotal world events, capturing the evolution of lifestyles and fashions, and opening windows into the lives of celebrities and everyday people.
One of our favorites is this classic Eisenstaedt image of children watching a puppet show shown here. Alfred snapped this in 1963, at the climax of Guignol’s “Saint George and the Dragon” in the Tuileries Garden in Paris. Just as the dragon is slain, some children cry out in a combination of horror and delight, while others are taken aback in shock. Every child is consumed with emotion, masterfully captured by Eisenstaedt’s camera. These amazing photos are now blended into our Image Search results along with other images from across the web.
Once you are in the archive, you’ll also notice that you can access a rich full-size, full-screen version of each image simply by clicking on the picture itself in the landing page. If you decide you really like one of these images, high-quality framed prints can be purchased from LIFE at the click of a button. Think of the holiday gift possibilities! It doesn’t get much easier than that.
So please take a look for yourself and experience these great photos. Your exploration will be limited only by your imagination and your desire to keep on clicking. Be sure to check back often as more photos from the LIFE archive will be added regularly to Google Image Search. We hope that you enjoy them as much as we do!
top left photo:Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. giving his “I Have a Dream” speech to huge crowd gathered for the Mall in Washington DC during the March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom (aka the Freedom March).
Location: Washington, DC, US
Date taken: August 28, 1963
Photographer: Francis Miller
Size: 1280 x 853 pixels (17.8 x 11.8 inches)
middle photo: The ParisiansWide range of facial expressions on children at puppet show – The moment the dragon is slain, Guignol puppet show, Parc de Montsouris, Paris, 1963.
Location: Paris, France
Date taken: 1963
Photographer:Alfred Eisenstaedt
