In an Oct. 28 letter from the editors, Life Magazine — which was founded in 1936 and became an icon of visual storytelling — announced it will begin publishing again after nearly 20 years. Its first new print issue “offers a window into an America searching for meaning.”
That 250-page edition hits newsstands Nov. 23, The New York Times reported, the inaugural step forward in a revival made possible by Bedford Media’s acquisition of the publication in 2024. The holding company was founded the year prior by model Karlie Kloss and is co-owned by her husband, venture capitalist Joshua Kushner.
More than 120 people put together the forthcoming issue, focusing on “finding the ordinary in the extraordinary, and the extraordinary in the ordinary,” per the editors’ letter. The reincarnated brand will expand into other avenues as well, amplifying its quarterly print pieces through digital storytelling, documentaries, and events.
When Henry Luce founded Life, at the tail end of the Great Depression and three years before World War II began, the intent was to “harness the emerging power of photojournalism,” the letter reads.
Luce had co-created Time magazine 13 years prior to deliver a concise weekly news digest to busy readers. Life took an opposite approach, inviting Americans to pore over dramatic multi-page photo spreads and essays that told stories about 20th-century topics large and small: from groundbreaking science and civil rights to movie stars and the lives of everyday people.
The first issue came out Nov. 23, 1936 (you can scroll through it in its entirety online). The cover story captured one of the major public works projects in development under then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s historic New Deal, and Page 2 featured a photo of a baby held upside down by a doctor moments after birth.
That view into the miracle of life (no pun intended) likely felt unprecedented to readers at the time. The newborn was George Story, who went on to become a journalist and liked to joke at parties that a nude picture of him had once been published in a national magazine.
After nearly four decades, Time Inc. ceased weekly publication of Life in 1972, citing production costs. The magazine returned in 1978 as a monthly publication and ran until 2000. In a full-circle moment, its final issue in that format also featured Story — this time covering his death at age 63. It was resurrected again in 2004 as a weekly newspaper supplement, but shut down three years later due to a decline in newspaper readership and ad sales, the company said, per NBC News.
The upcoming revival marks exactly 90 years since Life began. Take a look back at some of its most iconic photos and covers.
1951: Prince Charles with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret
1953: John F. Kennedy, still a senator, and then-fiance Jacqueline Bouvier
1959: Teens hang out admiring a car in Venice, California, the image was part of a story called “Kansas Squares vs. Coast Beats”
1968: A U.S. Marine reads Life Magazine while one of his buddies gives another one a haircut
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