'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 yesterday.
'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% of the pictures have never been seen before.
'Google announced yesterday 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.
'The collection includes the entire works of Life photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili and Nina Leen. Also available are: the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York from the 1880s; and Hugo Jaeger Nazi-era Germany 1937-1944.'
The range of photographs is exhaustive: from Queen Victoria to Marilyn Monroe, from the JFK assassination to the Belsen concentration camp, from the New York skyline to portraits of Allen Ginsberg or Jack Nicholson. I could spend hours browsing this massive collection: funny, beautiful and chilling in turn. You can find it by clicking here.
