Google is in the process of digitizing and hosting the entire Life magazine photo and engravings archive, that’s about ten million photos.  Ten million images and they’re all  wonderful.

I love photography and am old enough to remember the real years of weekly Life magazine.  For me, this will not be a productivity booster since I expect to spend plenty of time digging through the images.

So far about 20% of the collection that dates back to the 1750s has been digitized, all will eventually be available.  The photographs are being incorporated into Google Image Search and can be isolated in your search by including source:life in your query.

See the Life magazine search page.

Read about the collection on the Google blog.

I spent time yesterday browsing through the images, the photographs of Picasso particularly fascinated me.  Give them a look.

The picture Google chose to feature in their blog post announcement is also one of my favorites, shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt.

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.

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