LIFE: The Classic Collection of The 100 Greatest Pictures

Product Description

Quite often a LIFE book will, in words and particlarly in pictures, tell a narrative tale. It will also surprise and delight the reader with raely or never–before seen photos – images that, when we came upon them here in the office, delighted and surprised even us.

This is not that kind of book. It is, we hope, an entirely new and exciting kind of LIFE book.

You have almost certainly seen many if not most of the photographs to be presented in these pages. They include our most famous or beautiful images. All of the ones you might want to revisit are here in this collection of 100 Classics: the sailor kissing the nurse, Madonna kissing her own image, Macarthur coming ashore, Jackie Robinson coming'round third base, the Fab Four in a swimming pool, the Mercury Seven in their spacesuits, Lady Di on her wedding day, Jack and Jackie on his inauguration day, the fearsome monkey rising out of the water, the gentle policeman helping out the little boy, The war photography is here, the portraits of Hollywood's kings and queens are here, the funny photos that, through the decades, graced LIFE's back page are here as well. All of the famous photographers – Alfred Eisenstaudt, Margaret Bourke–White, Gordon Parks, Carl Mydans, Larry Burrows, Philippe Halsman, Ralph Morse, John Loengard, Nina Leen, John Dominis and on and on – are represented.

But they are represented in an entirely new way. They are presented in an entirely new way.

Their photographs have earned the right to stand on their own, apart from any text or magazine layout. Originally created to help tell a journalistic story, they have, quite rightly, come to be recognized as independent works of art. And here they are displayed as such, cleanly and in an over–sized format. Certainly the necessary information concerning what's happening in the picture (and what was going on behind the scenes when the pictures were made) is in this book. But it is unobtrusively separate, and the photographs are allowed to sing as they've never sung before.

Twenty–five of them are included as removable prints suitable for framing: a Classic Collection within the larger Collection, a deluxe innovation in this new kind of book.

So here you have these inarguably beautiful artifacts – the prints to be treasured forever, and the book itself to grace your coffee table. In these pages is the best of LIFE magazine and – as is clear in many of these heroic, lovely or simply touching photographs – the best of life itself.

Product Details

Hardcover book; 144 pages; New

Publisher: LIFE Books; 2008 (1st edition)

Editor: Robert Sullivan

Director of Photography: Barbara Baker Burrows

Creative Director: Richard Baker

Dimensions: 13.8 x 10.3 x 0.8 inches