Made for America

In the winter of 2004 an exhibition of vintage photographs from the Time-LIFE photo archive entitled "Made for America" took place at the Howard Greenberg Gallery of NYC.

Jay Eyerman Audience watches movie wearing 3-D spectacles, 1952

There's something I can't explain in the Time and LIFE magazines photo reportage. Something that catch me at first glance, maybe the quality of the photography which kidnaps my attention and makes me wanna be myself in the picture. They are able to evoke a mood (from nostalgia to sadness to yearning) black and white pictures somehow convey emotion in a way that colour images simply can't. Not everything is Black & White but sometimes it can be just what I need.

This exhibitions at the Howard Greenberg Gallery of New York City, which took place from December 2003 to January 2004, featured photographs drawn from the vast archives of the Time-LIFE Picture Collection. It was the first time many of these original prints had been displayed since appearing in Time-LIFE publications.

The photographs featured in Made for America were taken for LIFE, Time and Fortune magazine assignments by some of the most noted names in the history of photojournalism including Margaret Bourke-White, W. Eugene Smith, Robert Capa, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Horace Bristol, Martin Munkacsi, Erich Salomon and many more.

Revolutionary in American storytelling, these pioneering images from the Time-LIFE Picture Collection continue to shape our view of life.

Phil Stern Los Angeles Drive-In, 1949

Bob Wheeler Jackie Robinson begins his baseball career with the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947

Ralph Crane Teenagers racing hot-rod cars in Los Angeles, 1949

Ralph Crane July 4th on beach in Santa Monica, 1950

Irving Penn America's Most Photographed Models, 1947

Berenice Abbott Talman Street, between Jay and Bridge Streets, Brooklyn, NY, 22-May-36

WORLD WIDE PHOTOS President Roosevelt reviewing U.S. fleet from bridge of the USS Houston, 1938

Alfred Eisenstaedt VJ Day in Times Square, 1945

John D. Collins Wendell Willkie in motorcade 1940

When LIFE magazine debuted in 1936, few could have predicted the enormous impact the weekly publication would have on American culture. LIFE gave birth to a new way for Americans to experience the world and soon became a fixture in American households. When readers opened an issue of LIFE, they opened the world: happiness, tragedy, war and peace, politics and fashion were seen up close. LIFE changed the understanding of what the world looked like and what news was because it spoke in a language everyone could understand - pictures. LIFE launched America into the photographic age.

John D. Collins Wendell Willkie in motorcade 1940

W. Eugene Smith Marines blow up Japanese blockhouse on Iwo Jima, 1945

W. Eugene Smith Planes from first Naval air strike against Japan, 1945

Margaret Bourke-White Giant pipes for Fort Peck Dam, 1936

Arnold Eagle Interior of Penn Station, 1942

Robert Yarnall Richie Phillips Petroleum oil tanks, 1938

Gjon Mili Saks Fifth Ave Fashion Shot (Golf), c.1946

Arthur Gerlach Worker Smoking Cigarette and Carrying Bag Across Shoulders While Pausing in Middle of Steel Beam High Above City Streets During Construction of the Manhattan Co. Building at Forty Wall Street, 1930

Gjon Mili, Billie Holiday, 1943

Gordon Parks Gang leader Leonard Red Jackson, 17, looking anxiously out broken window while he is trapped in Harlem building by a rival gang, 1948

Source: Howard Greenberg Gallery