Since 2008, Google has been hosting the LIFE Photo Archive. It’s unbelievable. Like having a photo album dedicated to amazing pictures of all your heroes. Go ahead and search for anything, and chances are good you’ll find a beautiful picture of it. (Chimp is a pretty safe bet.)
Do it. Search for "baby giraffe."
Or you’ll find pictures of your heroes standing with people who are decidedly not your heroes. (I’ll let you guess which is which.)
Nice ascot, Gordon.
It’s an incredible resource for historical photos of any subject. I could waste an entire afternoon just looking at old baseball photos. (I just did.)
I wish I was alive back when Life was a weekly (1936–1972) and regularly published brilliant photojournalism, but alas. It went through several different publishing schedules from 1972–2007, finally becoming an online-only magazine in 2009. The Internet is a blessing and a curse for magazine readers, and through its wonders we now have a searchable archive of incredible photos through the Google search and Life.com. Google also offers a full archive of Life‘s original 1936–1972 run through Google Books. Come for the amazing photos, stay for the vintage ads.
