Photo Essays
Wildfires Ravage California Coast
Authorities on Thursday battled fast-moving flames devouring thousands of acres of brush and threatening hundreds of homes along the Pacific Coast Highway in...
Never Mind Icarus: The Solar-Powered Plane is Here
In the 117 years since the first solar cell was developed and the 110 years since the first powered flight, you’d have thought we would have combined the two...
Crazy and Colorful Coachella
Every April, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival takes over the town of Indio, California, for three days of performances on several stages. Fans from...
Let Fury Have the Hour: Early Days in the Fight for Gay Rights
In late 1971, two years after the Stonewall riots in New York sparked the modern gay rights movement in America, and twelve months before LIFE ceased publishing...
Remembering Jonathan Winters (1925–2013)
Jonathan Winters, known to some as the king of ad-lib comedy, died April 11, 2013, at the age of 87. Famous for his improvisational offbeat humor and quick wit,...
LIFE With Jack Nicholson: Early Photos of an Actor on the Brink
As difficult as it might be to fathom today — when the man known to all the world as “Jack” has journeyed from respected actor to movie star to superstar to...
LIFE Rides With the Hells Angels, 1965
From Jesse James and Butch Cassidy to Scarface and Tony Soprano, outlaws have always held a singularly ambiguous place in America’s popular imagination: we fear...
LIFE With Steve McQueen: Photos of the King of Cool in 1963
In the spring of 1963, already popular from his big-screen breakout as one of The Magnificent Seven and just a couple months away from entering the Badass Hall...
LIFE Behind the Picture: The Photo That Changed the Face of AIDS
In November 1990 LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man named David Kirby — his body wasted by AIDS, his gaze locked on something beyond this world...
Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll
In June 1969, LIFE magazine published a feature that today, incredibly, remains as moving and, in some quarters, as controversial as it was when it sparked...
The Fire Last Time: LIFE in Watts, 1966
The August 1965 Watts Riots (or Watts Rebellion, depending on one’s perspective and politics), were among the bloodiest, costliest and — in the five decades...
LIFE With Natalie Wood: Photos of the Superstar in 1963
Born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko in San Francisco at the height of the Great Depression, Natalie Wood (“Natasha” to close friends) was one of those rare stars...
Bitter Harvest: LIFE With America’s Migrant Workers, 1959
America has transformed its economic landscape (and has seen that landscape transformed by outside forces) so thoroughly in the past half-century that, to a...
LIFE With Marlon Brando: Early Photos of the Acting Legend
The year was 1949, and 25-year-old Marlon Brando — “the brilliant brat,” as LIFE magazine called him following his astonishing work on Broadway in A Streetcar...
The California Wildfires
The flames claim lives across Southern California
‘I’m Gonna Live by the Gun and Roam’: Portrait of a Spree Killer, 1951
The story of the American mass murderer Billy “Cockeyed” Cook — who killed six people, including an entire family of five, during a terrifying three-week spree...
Million-Dollar Manhunt: Los Angeles On Edge As Search Intensifies for Fugitive Ex-Cop
A pervasive fear hangs over the Los Angeles area as Christopher Dorner, the renegade fugitive accused of killing three people, remains on the run. The Los...
California Weather Crisis
Torrential rain and snow bring mudslides and flooding to the Golden State
LIFE With Zsa Zsa: Rare Photos of ‘Another Gabor,’ 1951
Anyone who has lived to be almost 100 likely has a few outlandish tales to tell. At least, one hopes they have tales to tell; it’s simply too awful to think of...
Wildfires Burn Across California
Firefighters battle increasingly intense blazes in several areas along the coast
