Look (magazine)
| Look
|
|
|---|---|
| description | magazine |
| publishing company | Cowles Media |
| First edition | February 1937 |
| attitude | October 1971 |
| Frequency of publication | monthly / bi-weekly |
| Editor-in-chief | Gardner Cowles, Jr. |
| ISSN (print) | 0024-6336 |
Look was an American magazine with a wide range of topics. It was published from 1937 to 1971 in Des Moines , Iowa on a bi-weekly basis. The large-format general-interest magazine placed high value on high-quality photos, articles only came second. Look competed with Life magazine , which appeared a few months earlier and had to cease publication in 1972.
founding
Gardner “Mike” Cowles, Jr. (1903–1985), editor-in-chief of The Des Moines Register and The Des Moines Tribune , founded Look with his brother John in early 1937. The editorial office was located at 488 Madison Avenue in New York . The magazine immediately sold 705,000 copies. Within weeks, the circulation rose to one million. The first five issues appeared as a monthly magazine and contained no advertising. For the later editions, starting on May 11, 1937, changes were made to the bi-weekly rhythm.
format
The unusual format (around 28 × 35.5 cm) of the first editions made it particularly flexible to design. In this way, individual photos or photo reports could be given longer captions or shorter articles. The concept was aimed at a wider readership than that of the rival magazine Life and promised in its advertising to include the interests of the whole family and the business world.
Prominent employees
Film director and screenwriter Stanley Kubrick began his career with Look. Even as a schoolboy he brought his amateur recordings to the editorial office. At the age of eighteen he got a permanent job as a photographer. The magazine printed over three hundred of his pictures before Kubrick made his first small documentary. These photos are now held by the Library of Congress and the Museum of the City of New York .
Other well-known photographers who worked for Look were Peter Basch , René Burri , Will McBride , Max Scheler , Ylla and Tony Vaccaro .
From 1963 onwards, the painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell , who was popular in the USA, worked for Look. In 40 years he had previously designed over 300 covers for the Saturday Evening Post and illustrated Boys' Life magazine for the Boy Scouts of America , the largest American scout association .
Edition
In 1948 the sold circulation per issue was 2.9 million copies. In 1954 it rose to 3.7 million. The publisher reached its largest circulation in 1966 with around 80 million copies. In 1969 there were only 7.5 million.
The magazine achieved the highest advertising income in 1966 with around 80 million dollars. That was look after life. the second largest large-format consumer magazine in the USA, followed by The Saturday Evening Post , which had to close in 1969, and Collier's , which only existed until 1956.
The end
With the spread of television coverage, the decline of large format magazines began. At Look , too , advertising revenues fell, postage rates rose, and management was ineffective. 1970 saw a loss of $ 5 million. The last issue of Look was published on October 19, 1971. The circulation was 6.5 million.
The valuable archive with around five million photographic works was donated to the Research Library Library of Congress in Washington, DC
After that
In 1979 the publishing house Hachette Filipachi Medias tried in vain to build on old successes. He brought out Look, The Picture Newsmagazine as a bi-weekly magazine. After a year this sheet also had to be given up.
External impact
Look has been featured in a number of films, including:
The magazine was also mentioned in some television series, for example in:
- The Simpsons in the episode The Trip to Knoxville
- Mad Men
- A look photographer played a role in an episode of I Love Lucy .
- In the 1953 film I love Melvin, starring Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor , the magazine was given a larger scene.
In the literature:
- In the introduction to his novel Portnoy's Complaints , Philip Roth named the magazine as an example of his father's bad taste in literature.
literature
- Gardner Cowles: Mike Looks Back: The Memoirs of Gardner Cowles, Founder of Look Magazine. G. Cowles, New York 1985, OCLC 13328799 .
- Emily Geminder: A Certain Look. In: The New York Observer . March 1, 2010, accessed March 12, 2015 .
Web links
- Look Magazine (Memory) , in American Treasures , Library of Congress.
- Cowles Family Publishing Legacy
Individual evidence
- ^ Victorias Magazine Prints First Issue. In: The Washington Post. January 6, 1937, p. 3.
- ↑ Ads to Look. In: Time . November 8, 1937.
- ↑ Look is Born. ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Look Out. In: Time. 11th January. 1937.
- ^ Library of Congress, Look Collection: Background and Scope
- ^ Look (advertisement), The Washington Post. March 31, 1937, p. 15.
- ^ Look (advertisement), New York Times. June 8, 1948, p. 16.
- ↑ Shake-up at Look. In: Time. January 11, 1954.
- ^ A b Cowles Closing Look Magazine After 34 Years. In: The New York Times. September 17, 1971, p. 1.
- ^ Library of Congress, Look Collection: Background and Scope .
- ^ Library of Congress, Look Collection: Background and Scope
