The magazine was best known for its photography. In making up a typical issue (which came out twice a month), editors would review as many as 8,000 photographs. During its lifetime the magazine published more than 180,000 photos, many of them iconic. The magazine had a full-time photography staff of 15 and hired many additional freelance photographers. Twelve men worked in the darkroom.
Here are pictures of comedian Red Skelton, Jack Benny, and another Avedon shot of the disgraced Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
When the magazine folded, more than 1 million photographs were donated to the Library of Congress, where they reside today.
The magazine often featured prominent artists, such as these pictures of Andrew Wyeth, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keefe, and Alexander Calder.
Go to page 3 for photos of young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Mohammed Ali, a president, a blue-collar worker, and more.
This article was last modified on May 17, 2023
This article was first published on November 5, 2009
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who took the photograph of janis joplin?
I currently work for a company that exists thanks to LOOK Magazine. There are still numerous issues of LOOK that were framed and hang throughout the company as a tribute to from where we came. I still see people periodically who actually worked at LOOK before its demise. I’m not sure if we still have people working who were former LOOK employees, but we probably do. I remember driving by the corporate building with my family as a child after the closing was announced and also remember that people felt sad about its closing. It was a completely different era when you could better trust what was published. There really wasn’t a need to read it and rate it first to see if it was fit to allow on your coffee table. Publishers where more responsible then. Thanks for the article Gene and thanks to LOOK and great people who fulfilled the distribution of the magazine. Because of them I have a good job with a successful company which has existed since 1972.
Superb, Gene! Please keep it up. I was born in 1937 on a little farm in Nebraska, and remember so many of the LOOK and LIFE photos. Even though my folks were poor, reading was an important activity on our winter days and summer evenings. Dad subscribed not only to LOOK, but also to Popular Mechanics (I learned a lot from those!), Sports Illustrated, Readers Digest and more! In addition, I took out several books a week when I went to High School a few blocks from the town library. From the Art and Photography books I read then, I became a Photographer, Printer in top quality magazines and just recently retired. Kudos to the to the Iowa boy who started LOOK!
Nice article and really enjoyed. These 2 magazines were also staples in my growing up – and agree a quite different perspective than one can get from a screen. Unfortunately, many won’t know the thrill of developing film in a darkroom. Love the new technology – but I hope the roots are still being taught in photography classes. Makes for a better understanding of photography and yes magazine ads.
Thanks Gene. Always enjoy.
I love the real photographs Gene, they’re not the over-edited digital fantasies that we’re fed a regular diet of now.
I doubt that a magazine today (except a supermarket tabloid chronicling this or that break-up or breakdown) would run a photo of a celebrity showing a yellowing bruise on her arm or lines under her eyes… That photograph of Marilyn is so real – with her standing there so fragile and ephemeral – it makes you feel like you are seeing her for the first time, stripped of the trappings that celebrity photos so often have.
I grew up with Look and especially remember those amazing pictures of the ‘Fab Four’. I would posit that only folks who visit style/photograpy blogs see anything even remotely like this wonderful photography in media today. Print lovers must resort to coffee table books…