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Monday, November 24, 2008

Now online: Life Magazine's archive of Indonesia photos

Life Magazine may be dead and gone, another victim of the print-to-digital revolution, but its iconic photos live on. In fact Google is now hosting their entire photo archive, of which there are about 200 shots of Indonesia at critical moments through the country's history.

It's quite an amazing voyage down memory lane. There are photos of Indonesian leaders in the fullness of youth, like Sukarno and Suharto; images of visiting dignitaries, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Soviet Union's Nikita Kruschev; nature shots from decades ago, of Sumatran tigers, Borneo orangutans and Komodo dragons; and regular folks caught in a moment in time, from mosque-goers to Balinese dancers.

In total the Life archive consists of millions of photos dating back to the 1750s, and is helpfully broken down by factors like people, places and events. Most were never even published, so it's well worth a look ... if only for a glimpse of when print journalism was still king, and the public collected Life Magazine photos as the precious specimens they were.


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