Life pictures on Google

The announcement yesterday of the availability of the Life Magazine photo archive on Google Image has lots of sites buzzing. (See Sheila Lennon, for example...) Getting access to this treasure trove is nearly unbelievable, and will be invaluable to researchers and historians.

Take one search, for example: searching 'Miami' on the archive finds two great collections, a series of many photos taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in winter 1940, mostly on Miami Beach; and a large number of photos from the 1972 Republican National Convention that nominated Richard Nixon. A small collection of other random photos completes the list, some well-identified like the Eisenstaedt photos and others nearly unidentifiable.

A couple of the 1940 Eisenstaedt photos:
(The second photo is from a cold spell in which temperatures hit 31 degrees for a couple days. There are others, including one of a woman wearing a mink jacket over her bathing suit -- fascinating stuff.)