The first comprehensive consideration of Life magazine’s groundbreaking and influential contribution to the history of photography

From the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, the vast majority of the photographs printed and consumed in the United States appeared on the pages of illustrated magazines. Offering an in-depth look at the photography featured in Life magazine throughout its weekly run from 1936 to 1972, this volume examines how the magazine’s use of images fundamentally shaped the modern idea of photography in the United States. The work of photographers both celebrated and overlooked—including Margaret Bourke-White, Larry Burrows, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Frank Dandridge, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Fritz Goro, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith—is explored in the context of the creative and editorial structures at Life. Contributions from 25 scholars in a range of fields, from art history to American studies, provide insights into how the photographs published in Life—used to promote a predominately white, middle-class perspective—came to play a role in cultural dialogues in the United States around war, race, technology, art, and national identity.

Drawing on unprecedented access to Life magazine’s picture and paper archives, as well as photographers’ archives, this generously illustrated volume presents previously unpublished materials, such as caption files, contact sheets, and shooting scripts, that shed new light on the collaborative process behind many now-iconic images and photo-essays.

Since its founding in 1947, the legendary Magnum Photos agency has been telling its own story about photographers who were witnesses to history and artists on the hunt for decisive moments. Based on unprecedented archival research, The Decisive Network unravels Magnum's mythologies to offer a new history of what it meant to shoot, edit, and sell news images after World War II. Nadya Bair shows that between the 1940s and 1960s, Magnum expanded the human-interest story to global dimensions while bringing the aesthetic of news pictures into new markets. Working with a vast range of editorial and corporate clients, Magnum made photojournalism integral to postwar visual culture. But its photographers could not have done this alone. By unpacking the collaborative nature of photojournalism, this book shows how picture editors, sales agents, spouses, and publishers helped Magnum photographers succeed in their assignments and achieve fame. Bair concludes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when changing market conditions led Magnum to consolidate its brand. In that moment, Magnum's photojournalists became artists and their assignments oeuvres. Bridging art history, media studies, cultural history, and the history of communication, The Decisive Network transforms our understanding of the photographic profession and the global circulation of images in the predigital world.