Life, one of publishing’s oldest magazines, will issue its final edition this weekend.  Though the magazine started out with a general interest focus in 1883, Henry Luce, founder of Time and Fortune, bought the rights to the name Life for $92,000 in 1936 and turned the magazine into an overnight sensation by devoting as much editorial space to photographs as to words.  For three decades, from the the 1940s through the 1960s, the magazine was at the forefront of pop culture, highlighting the people and events that marked our time.  And its circulation reflected it, reaching nearly 9 million households weekly.  In 1978, the magazine began issuing monthly, which it did until 2000, when, due to poor ad sales and low subscriptions, the magazine took on its final incarnation, a newspaper supplement competing with Parade and USA Weekend.  Since the magazine brought photojournalism into America’s living room, we thought it would be apropos to look back at some of the magazine’s notable cover images.  Click the  thumbnails to see the full size image. Or search Life’s website, which features every cover they’ve ever released.

Related post: Cheap Books, Killer Looks