“Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints.
We're digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time.
Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.”
LIFE has some of the best photography in the world, and it’s a valuable archive, very entertaining.
You can use this interface to browse LIFE photos:
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
The key is the new keyword “source:life” tag in Google image search.
Many of the photos have never been seen before! This query shows rarely-seem images of Hitler:
http://images.google.com/images?q=hitler+source%3Alife
For example, this search shows how teenage fads have changed over the past half century:
http://images.google.com/images?&q=teenagers+source%3Alife
You can also include dates! This query shows aircraft form the 1940’s:
http://images.google.com/images?&q=1940s+aircraft+source%3Alife
You can also find rarely seen photos of the Nazi holocaust (Warming: extremely graphic images)
http://images.google.com/images?&q=dead+jews+source%3Alife
