Life (magazine)
Life is an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, a monthly from 1978 until 2000, and an online supplement since 2008.[1] During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, Life was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest magazine known for the quality of its photography, and was one of the nation's most popular magazines, regularly reaching one-quarter of the population.[2]
Not to be confused with Life (journal).Editor
Humor, general interest
Weekly
Clair Maxwell (1921–1942)
250,000
January 4, 1883
November 18, 2008 (online supplement)
2000 (print)
United States
New York City, U.S.
English
Life was published independently for its first 53 years until 1936 as a general-interest and light entertainment magazine, heavy on illustrations, jokes, and social commentary. It featured some of the most important writers, editors, illustrators and cartoonists of its time, including Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell, and others. In 1918, Gibson became the magazine's editor following the death of John Ames Mitchell, its owner and editor. During its later years, the magazine offered brief capsule reviews, similar to those in The New Yorker, of plays and movies running in New York City, but with the innovative touch of a colored typographic bullet resembling a traffic light, appended to each review: green for a positive review, red for a negative one, and amber for mixed notices.
In 1936, Time publisher Henry Luce bought Life solely for its title, and greatly redesigned the publication. LIFE (stylized in all caps) became the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for several decades, with a circulation peaking at over 13.5 million copies a week. The magazine's role in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Its prestige attracted the memoirs of President Harry S. Truman, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Douglas MacArthur, all serialized in its pages.
After 2000, Time Inc. continued to use the Life brand for special and commemorative issues. Life returned to regularly scheduled issues as a weekly newspaper supplement from 2004 to 2007.[3] The website life.com, originally one of the channels on Time Inc.'s Pathfinder service, was for a time in the late 2000s managed as a joint venture with Getty Images under the name See Your World, LLC.[4]
On January 30, 2012, the Life.com URL became a photo channel on Time.com.[3][5]
Editor-in-chief
Weekly (1936–1972)
Monthly (1978–2000)
1,000,000
November 23, 1936
May 2000 (print)
United States
New York City, New York, U.S.
English
Notable contributors have included:
Photojournalists:
Film critics:
Fashion:
Photographers:
Illustrators:
Writers: