Time Inc announced on Tuesday that Google was putting online the entire collection of photos from the legendary but now defunct LIFE magazine including some of the most iconic images of the 20th century.
Time said access to LIFE's photo archive, a total of more than 10 million images, would be available on a new hosted service from the Internet search giant at images.google.com/hosted/life.
The images from LIFE, a Time subsidiary, can also be found by conducting a search on Google.com or through Google Image Search. The collection includes pictures from renowned photojournalists such as Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks and W. Eugene Smith. The LIFE photo archive also includes the Zapruder film of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, The Mansell Collection from London and Hugo Jaeger's pictures of Nazi-era Germany from 1937-1944.
Time said 97 percent of the photographs have never been seen by the public. R.J. Pittman, director of product management at Google, said "bringing millions of never-before-seen offline images online aligns with Google's mission to organise all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Time said the photos are available for free for personal and research purposes. The copyright and ownership of all images remains with Time.