Thursday, November 20, 2008

LIFE photos

Tuesday's launch of the LIFE photo archives on Google Images has created quite a stir. Most exciting for me are the great photographs of Villa-Lobos by W. Eugene Smith that show the composer's geniality, intensity, and humanity.

The Smith photos are undated, but they look to me to be from the early 1950s (Smith left LIFE in 1955). Compare Villa in the Smith photos with the three 1945 pictures from the LIFE archive; he has a bit less hair, but just as much vitality. Pictures from the mid- and late-1950s often show an older man dealing with major illness.

Here's a great example of Smith's genius (© Time Inc.):

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