Customer Reviews

Images of Our Times: Sixty Years of Photography from the Los Angeles Times

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The most interesting thing about the photographs in this collection is the access news photographers used to have. Here is a picture of the halved corpse of a young woman. It's the Black Dahlia case, from 1947, although the caption doesn't tell you that, perhaps because the nickname was invented by a Herald-Examiner reporter.

The book doesn't say the picture was published in the Los Angeles Times, only that it was taken by a Time staff photographer, R.L. Oliver.

Even gangsters, or at least one Mickey Cohen, welcomed the news photogs. There are several Cohen pictures here, including one of him examining his bathroom, which had been bombed. That one was published.

Nowadays, the yellow tape goes up and reporters and photographers have a hard time getting access to a one-alarm fire.

It was in some ways a more innocent age. A 1953 photograph by R.O. Ritchie is described as a "bizarre murder." Today we recognize it as an autoerotic asphyxiation, either an accident or a suicide, according to taste, but no murder. However, the book was published in 1987, and the editor, Jim Wilson, ought to have known better by then.

People who believe that natural disasters, fires and floods, of recent years are somehow caused by global warming will be disabused by the photographs from the `20s and `30s, which show that recent events are not unusual.

With only 241 photographs selected out of tens of thousands, the editors had to be choosy. They chose, on the whole, to leave out movie stars.

California is arguably the state that leads the nation in the amount of news it produces and the Los Angeles Times is the leading newspaper in the state. This collection of news photos covers everything from political assassinations, the aftermath of major earthquakes, the actions of Hollywood personalities, major sporting events, bizarre murders and some situations that are just comical.

It is a book that you can leave on your coffee table and then pick up at any dead time and be entertained. The images depict all aspects of life and sometimes of death.

My mom had this book in her collection when I was growing up, and I remember poring over its pages for countless hours, fascinated by the pictures and captions. I credit both this book and the LA Times Front Page book with adding to my passion for both history and current events, and I have now purchased copies of both books to add to my own collection. If you enjoy historical photography of both places and events, you'll enjoy this book.