The
Library of Congress >> Prints & Photographs
Division >> Prints & Photographs
Online Catalog >> Look Collection
Introduction | The
Photographers | Cataloged
Material | Uncataloged
Material
| Documentation
Introduction
Sample contact sheet from Look magazine collection and page from a corresponding article showing the selection of photos that were published.
Charlotte Brooks,
photographer. [Fluoridation: Why all the
controversy?]. Contact sheet. LOOK - Job
58-7809-Z
LC-USZ62-126852
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Page from LOOK magazine
article titled "Fluoridation: Why
all the controversy?" 1958.
LC-USZ62-126855
|
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The Look Magazine Photograph Collection
is the photographic archive of Look magazine.
The full collection, which includes cataloged
and uncataloged portions, consists of images
published in Look magazine between
1937 and 1971, as well as images that the magazine
never
published. It totals approximately 5 million
items
consisting of:
- black-and-white negatives (35 mm, 120 size,
4x5 inches and 8x10 inches)
- black-and-white contact sheets
- color transparencies and slides (35 mm,
120 size, 4x5 inches and 8x10 inches).
Look was a biweekly, general interest popular
magazine published from March 1937 to October
1971 by Gardner Cowles, Jr., under various company
names: Look, Inc. (1937-45); Cowles Magazines
(1946-65); and Cowles Communications, Inc. (1965-71).
Look began as a tabloid-style magazine that
emphasized sports, movie stars, and sensationalism.
After World War II, it became more family oriented
and included articles on social and political
subjects, as well as regular features on personalities,
food, fashion, and sports. Look's "golden
years" (1954-64) followed improvements
in the magazine's design and focus by editor
Fleur Cowles, art director Alan Hurlburt, managing
editor Dan Mich, and others.
The photographs reflect the wide variety of
topics covered by the magazine, including:
- celebrities in many fields, especially politics, entertainment, and the arts
- food
- fashion
- lifestyles
- sports
- developments in medicine and technology
- social issues such as civil rights and women's changing roles
- international affairs.
Taken together, the published and unpublished
images provide insight into the magazine's photojournalistic
documentation of aspects of society and culture--particularly
American society and culture--in the middle
decades of the twentieth century.
Look's publisher,
Cowles Communications, gave the collection
to the Library of Congress in
1971, along with the archives of two related
publications, Quick and Flair. Quick was
a short-lived (1951-1953), pocket-sized publication
for which the Library
of Congress holds only a limited number of
photographs. Quick photographs
that also appeared in Look are cataloged with
the Look material
and can be distinguished by their call numbers,
which include the word "Quick" (e.g.,
LOOK - Job 52-Quick 179).
Flair materials
are currently unprocessed.
The Photographers
The magazine employed a substantial number
of photographers. In any one year, an average
of 12 photographers worked on staff as salaried
employees. Some had backgrounds
in documentary
photography.
John Vachon and
Arthur Rothstein, for example, had worked during
the 1930s and 1940s for the federal government's
Farm Security Administration and Office of War
Information. Stanley Tretick and Tony Vaccaro
had previously served as photographers
in the military.
While
many photographers who were hired on staff
worked only for a short time for the magazine,
several
had
long
careers
there,
producing thousands of photographs in the
course of their work. Among the most prolific
were:
- Paul Fusco
- Jim Hansen
- Douglas Jones
- Douglas Kirkland
- Bob Lerner
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- Maurice Terrell
- Earl Theisen
- Stanley Tretick
- Tony Vaccaro
- Bob Vose
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In addition to its cadre of staff photographers,
Look employed a large number
of photographers who regularly worked on a contract
basis over the years. Notable among these, for
instance, were Archie Lieberman and Susan Greenberg-Wood.
An alphabetical list
of photographers represented in the cataloged
portion of the collection is available online.
The collection came with very little documentation
about the photographers. Particularly
in the early years of the magazine, it is not
always
clear
on what
basis
photographers
worked for the magazine--whether they were
hired on staff and received a salary or were
simply commissioned for particular jobs. Starting
in about 1942, when the magazine's masthead
began to include photographers,
the appearance of a photographer's name in
the masthead served as
an indication that the individual worked on
staff.
Prints & Photographs Division staff had
conversations with a few former Look photographers
in the course of
preparing the collection. The photographers'
comments about their working methods suggest
that one of the perceived advantages of working
for Look was that they could "pitch" promising
stories to the editors. Photographers usually
worked in tandem with a writer, developing a
story
as
information
unfolded,
rather than following a pre-constructed shooting
script. (See the Related
Resources - Recorded Sound section for
a list of audio interviews with Look staff
and others commenting on Look in
the context of American photojournalism .)
Scope of the Cataloged
Material
The mammoth Look archive came
to the Library of Congress in varying states
of organization; some material was fairly clearly
grouped and identified, other material was not.
P&P staff spent ten years
analyzing, organizing and cataloging the material
that could most readily be served to the public,
making accessible nearly four million items
through ten thousand catalog records.
Materials served in the reading room for
LOOK Job 59-8405 relating to John F.
Kennedy.
The material
served in the reading room consists of contact
sheets of black-and-white photographs and
photocopies of published black-and-white
and color images.
Catalog
record for LOOK Job 59-8405
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Certain key factors determined what material staff cataloged and how.
Key concept: the photographic "job": A "job" consists of images made for a single photo assignment, whether the images were ever published or not. Each job can include black-and-white photographs and color transparencies or slides. Images from a single job may have been used and reused in several different Look articles. One Look article may have used images from several different jobs.
Example: LOOK - Job 59-8405 consists of photographs John Vachon made of Senator John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy in 1959. Although not all of the black-and-white and color photographs were published, photographs from this job were used in fourteen Look articles between 1959 and 1967, as well as a book published in 1968 by Look.
-
Images made by Look:
The cataloged material consists of images produced
by photographers working for Look,
either on staff or on commission. Images the
magazine acquired from other sources (e.g.,
movie stills, wire service photographs,
other photographs purchased for one-time use)
are not cataloged, because they are usually
represented only by copy negatives without any
reproduction rights and a legible image can
be seen in the published magazine pages.
-
Jobs,
1952-1971: All jobs made by Look,
published and unpublished, dating from 1952-1971,
are
cataloged. (Note: Some jobs from this period
were missing from the archive when the Library
received
it.)
-
Jobs taken before 1952 and tapped
for issues published 1952-1971 -
Photo assignments that were shot prior to
1952
but
were published
in Look between
1952
and
1971 are also cataloged (about 150 jobs).
-
Stanley Kubrick photos -
Of the more than 300 assignments Kubrick did
for Look (1946-1951), a little
more than 100 are in Library of Congress collection;
other Kubrick material may be found in the
Museum of the City of New York (see Related
Resources). Because of interest expressed
in Kubrick's work, all Look jobs
with which Stanley Kubrick was associated
are cataloged, with descriptions focusing
on negatives that have been printed.
For further information about the catalog records,
how to interpret them, and what material can be
readily served in the reading room,
see the section Access
to the Cataloged Collection.
Scope of Uncataloged Material
Some material remains uncataloged and, therefore,
will
not
be found by searching the online records. The
uncataloged material includes:
Sample of uncataloged
negatives: Two "bags" of negatives
relating to an assignment carried out "around
1939," according to the limited information
recorded on the bag.
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-
Jobs assigned prior to
1952 and not tapped for publication after 1952:
Sample processing efforts revealed
that the resources required to re-assemble
the photo assignments from the period 1937-1951
into a usable order was disproportionate to
the content
that
such
an
effort yielded.
-
In large part, this material
consists of bags of
negatives,
in no
consistent arrangement.
-
Generally, the negatives
do not have corresponding contact sheets.
-
In many
cases,
the negatives
provide
a limited range
of visual
content.
-
Look documentation
for the period, 1944-1952, is
spotty; for the
period
before
1944 it is
non-existent.
Service of this portion of the material is
difficult, at best:
- The negatives are stored off-site cold storage
in order to preserve them.
- Retrieving published images from
this period is sometimes possible, but photographs
published in the very early years of the magazine
(prior
to
1946) are elusive and often turn
out
to
be missing
from
the archive.
- Locating unpublished images
for particular assignments is rarely successful
because the numbering system used by the
magazine for
materials
from
this
period
is inconsistent.
-
Images marked "Restricted":
Rarely, a photographic job carried out by
a Look photographer during
the 1952-1971 period includes a notation "Restricted." As
the nature of the restriction was unclear,
the material was not cataloged.
-
Images not made
by Look: Sometimes Look acquired
photographs for one-time use, almost always
in the form of copy negatives.
Given
the service issues the copy
negatives
pose,
the fact that the published image in the
magazine legibly conveys the visual
information from such images, and the fact
that this material represents a minor part
of Look's overall operation,
resources were not expended on cataloging
this material.
-
Look images
acquired separately: Included
in the personal collections acquired from
photographers Arthur Rothstein and Charlotte
Brooks are images they made while working
for Look magazine. (See the
Related Resources section
for information about these Prints & Photographs
Division holdings.)
For information
on requesting access to uncataloged material,
see Access
to Unprocessed Materials.
Collection Documentation
Despite the mammoth size of the Look photo
archive, the documentation that accompanied
the photographs
is sparse. It consists of:
- Log books, 1944-1971 -
Notebooks that record photographic
assignments
("jobs") carried out by
staff photographers
and photographers who worked on commission.
The entries consist of the photographer's
name, a working title for the assignment (which
does not necessarily match a published title),
date received, and a job number. The same
information is given in two different arrangements:
1)
alphabetical
by
photographer's
name; 2) chronological (with only a few entries until
1947).
- Published Articles Card Catalog -
Entries under article titles, subjects, and
photographers; the cards cite the date and
page of the Look article and
indicate if the article includes pictures.
In some cases this index provides more detailed
access
to
article
content
(though
not specific
photo content) than that provided by either
indexes published in Look volumes
or general periodical indexes.
- Unbound Look Issues - These
issues are retained for photoduplication purposes;
researchers needing access to the publication
should consult the bound volumes in the General
Collections (see Access
to the Cataloged Collection).
- Bound, Annotated Look Issues,
1950-1971 - Annotated by
Look staff to indicate job numbers and
story numbers; these archival records
were used to prepare the collection and
are not served to the public.
- Logs for Purchased Photos, 1957-1971 - An
incomplete record of what was paid for one-time
use of photographs not generated
by Look. Consists of issues annotated
by Look staff with price and source.
- Staff Portrait File
- Pictures of some Look photographers and
editors.
The Prints and Photographs Division holdings
do not include photographers'
shooting scripts
or correspondence. Only a
handful of caption lists exist. Prints & Photographs
Division staff included information from extant
caption lists
in catalog
records.
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The
Library of Congress >> Prints & Photographs
Division >> Prints & Photographs
Online Catalog >> Look Collection (
May 9, 2005
)
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