John W. Poynton
Flat Rock, NC, US
For some time I have wanted to share my enthusiasm for collecting LIFE magazines between 1936 and 1948. We get most of our news today from TV, the Internet, social media and newspapers. When LIFE’s publisher, Henry Luce, created a news picture magazine in 1936, he demonstrated that pictures could tell a story along with, and sometimes instead of, text.
LIFE became to Americans, on a weekly basis, the equivalent of what the TV evening news became to the next generation. The news picture magazine transformed news reporting just as the Internet is changing how news is delivered today. LIFE between the years 1936 and 1948 captured the lives of what some call America’s “Greatest Generation” as they scrambled out of the depression and fell headlong into WWII. We know how events turned out during this period.
LIFE captures the drama, the challenges, the doubts and the heroic achievements of this time and serves as an authentic voice. This blog selects compelling moments from 1936 to 1948 as portrayed in LIFE. My purpose is to reflect on these moments and to educate, and it is not for any commercial purpose.
~John W. Poynton
@JWPoynton
Love your site! I will have to engage my search engine (look into many drawers) for my Nov 20, 1939 Life magazine. Its cover has several British warships, but there is no mention inside of my pending birth on Nov 21. Let me know if you need this copy.
What a swell website!
What a creative and living method of keeping the recent before our eyes.