Life’s Photo Archive Living Online, Via Google

One of the biggest photo collections in the world is now available to the public online, thanks to Life Magazine and Google. Most of the photographs, which ranges from the 1750s through the present day have never been seen before.

As of Tuesday, 20% of Life’s approximately 10 million image library of photographs is available; according to the Google press release, more will be added until all are available.

The reason for the rollout is the digitization process: most were unpublished, as I said, and most of these have been:

sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time.

Let’s not forget capitalism, however. Each image can be enlarged to full screen by clicking on it. And if you’d like, you can buy it:

Once you are in the archive, you’ll also notice that you can access a rich full-size, full-screen version of each image simply by clicking on the picture itself in the landing page. If you decide you really like one of these images, high-quality framed prints can be purchased from LIFE at the click of a button. Think of the holiday gift possibilities! It doesn’t get much easier than that.

Many of the photographs are historic images, such as the one above from the Omaha Beach landing at Normandy on D-Day. Many are also from great photographers, such as Margaret Bourke-White.

You’ll recall I wrote earlier about “The Commons,” an effort originally between Flickr and the Library of Congress, later joined by The Smithsonian and others. This effort dwarfs that prior project, although if the LoC were to put all its images online, it would surpass Life’s collection, at 14 million vs. 10 million.