LIFE Photo Essay

Life Before ‘Having It All’: Portrait of a Working Girl

By Eliza Berman

Celebrate National Nurses Week With a LIFE Cover Story on Nursing in the 1930s

By Eliza Berman

39 Photos That Captured the Human Side of the Vietnam War

By Eliza Berman

Life Before Equal Pay Day: Portrait of a Working Mother in the 1950s

By Eliza Berman

A Portrait of Old Age in America in the Pre-Medicare Era

A look back at LIFE's four-part series on the plight of the elderly in 1959, for which a photographer was dispatched to take what one editor called 'horror pictures'

By Eliza Berman March 5, 2015

The Photos That Gave Americans Their First Glimpse of Apartheid in 1950

On the 25th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, a historian examines the LIFE photo essay that introduced Americans to South Africa's devastating system of segregation

By John Edwin Mason February 11, 2015

'Wow, Quel Babes!': American Teenagers in Paris in the 1950s

They scorned frog legs, drank Coca-Cola and studied Parisian charm. LIFE photographer Gordon Parks captured their carefree European lives, and experienced a new kind of freedom there, as well

By John Edwin Mason January 29, 2015

Under a Mississippi Sun: Portraits of Depression-Era Sharecroppers

Alfred Eisenstaedt's remarkable photos of sharecroppers working their plots of soil on the Delta & Pine Land Co. plantation in Scott, Miss., in the midst of the Great Depression.

By Ben Cosgrove October 23, 2014

'Career Girl' Gwyned Filling: Classic Photos by Leonard McCombe

Seven decades after they were made, Leonard McCombe's photos of a young woman's life in 1948 New York City are still wonderfully moving

By Ben Cosgrove September 28, 2014

Revisiting Gordon Parks' Classic Photo Essay, 'Harlem Gang Leader'

A new exhibition examines Gordon Parks' vision of what "Harlem Gang Leader" could have been and the photo essay as it ran in LIFE magazine.

By John Edwin Mason September 21, 2014

LIFE With Postwar Teens: Photos of Fads From Around the U.S. in 1948

In late 1948, LIFE revisited a topic that the magazine had covered a number of times in previous years, and would delve into again and again over the next several decades: namely, teenagers.

By Ben Cosgrove September 2, 2014

'Two Lives Lost to Heroin': A Harrowing, Early Portrait of Addicts

In the wake of the news that heroin deaths in the U.S. quadrupled during the last three years, LIFE.com presents a seminal 1965 photo essay on heroin addiction.

By Ben Cosgrove October 3, 2013

W. Eugene Smith's Landmark Photo Essay, 'Nurse Midwife'

While the media goes berserk over a royal baby in England, LIFE.com presents a classic photo essay focusing on a heroic South Carolina nurse and midwife named Maude Callen.

By Ben Cosgrove July 21, 2013

Hemingway in Cuba, 1952: Portrait of a Legend in Decline

LIFE.com presents pictures of Ernest Hemingway in Cuba in 1952 -- and the unsettling, untold story behind the making of the photos.

By Ben Cosgrove June 3, 2013

Fighting Teen Pregnancy: Portrait of a Radical High School Program, 1971

Photos from a 1971 LIFE magazine story on teen pregnancy, "Help for High School Mothers," chronicling the lives of teen moms and moms-to-be

By Ben Cosgrove May 24, 2013

Obesity in America: Photos From the Early Days of a National Health Crisis

Obesity remains one of America's most critical health issues. Here, LIFE.com recalls a take on the subject from six long decades ago.

By Ben Cosgrove March 21, 2013

LIFE's First-Ever Cover Story: Building the Fort Peck Dam, 1936

LIFE.com reprints the very first cover story from the very first issue of LIFE magazine, in its entirety, along with a number of Margaret Bourke-White photos that did not appear in the November 23, 1936, issue.

By Ben Cosgrove November 16, 2012

W. Eugene Smith's Landmark Portrait: 'Country Doctor'

'Country Doctor' was an instant classic when first published in LIFE in 1948, establishing W. Eugene Smith as a master of the photo essay

By Ben Cosgrove February 1, 2012