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Sens. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Theodore Francis Green (D-RI) conferring in 1959.

I've been browsing, fascinated, through decades of photos from Life Magazine that have just been archived and made searchable. Humphrey Bogart photographed in Newport, six men at the beach near Narragansett Pier in 1889, Hillary Rodham at Wellesley in 1969, FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt.

There are photos of Elvis, Georgia O'Keefe, Apollo 15, of and by Gordon Parks, speakeasies, Salvadore Dali, a whole gallery of Picasso sculpture and beautiful DNA models.

Young women in evening gowns, all with white hair, at a ball in opulent Newport. Undated.

Google Blogoscoped reports (Google's Life Photo Archive):

Google together with Life magazine has published a photo archive of, according to Google, around 2 million photos (with around 8 million supposed to be released in the future). Many of these photos have never before been published, Google says. The actual search behind this is a regular Google image but with the parameter source:life in the query.

Colin in the forum writes "This is pretty cool to be able to browse through each decade of pictures" but notes you're "limited to 200 results per search". Colin adds:

"Once you click on any photo result, it will load a landing page giving you more details about that photo and the chance to rate the photo with up to a 5 star rating. You can then click on the photo to view an even larger version. I hope over time they remove the 200 result limit. Otherwise you have to constantly tweak your search query to see any other photographs similar to your query. Besides photographs, they also scanned in TIME magazine covers."

As many photos are quite old, this also means many should have passed into the public domain

Here's the link to the Google-Life Archive, where you can start searching, or browse by decade (the 1800s section is a history of art) or by a few listed starter topics.

In Google Images, just add "source:life" (without quotes) to any regular search.

The search limits you to 200 results. If you search Rhode Island, there are many images of Newport, and many of them are tennis-related, so you might try

Rhode Island -Newport source:life

Everyone will find something different here. NYT's Gadgetwise blog found

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 on Nazi-era Germany.

Cruising through the catalog is an amazing journey, even if you're just browsing. Check out Audrey Hepburn at the Oscars in 1954, Carl Mydans photographing the slums of Washington, D.C. in the Thirties, and incredible portfolios of both World Wars, including about 200 of Robert Capa's stunning images.

The labels that permit searching are a little dicey: Look for Woodstock under Bethel, for instance; Pawtucket is misspelled Pastucket. It's worth stumbling on for this photo alone, of the aftermath of Hurricane Carol on downtown Providence. (That Tippy McCann trash receptacle is stenciled "City of Providence," and it's on Westminster Street. The vertical Cherry & Webb department store sign is barely legible, just beyond the Shepard building.)

But just keep free associating and you'll turn up amazing images. Click on them and they'll get larger.

 Tags  google Life Magazine photos

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