Saturday, July 18, 2009

LIFE in 1969

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In the continuing theme of late 1960s culture, press coverage of the space race and the Apollo Program, I thought a wonderful sign of the era was LIFE Magazine. Published in various paper formats and between 1883 and 2007, the trusted record of photo-journalism let most American households know what was going on in the world. Click on the covers below to see larger images:

Apollo 11 Life Magazine Covers

Today, it survives as the LIFE.com internet archive, and unsurprisingly, they are covering the 40th anniversary of the moon landing as enthusiastically as it reported the landing mission itself!

Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin is their guest editor and interviewee for the week, and they are also currently featuring some great space collections, including Scenes From The Moon and Up Close With Apollo 11.

There are some wonderful scenes of all three astronauts in training, during missions, and with the wives and children in the 1960s. Many have never been released to the public before, and it's definitely worth running through the slideshows. This was my favorite:

Chef Neil Armstrong prepares pizzas!