Yale Joel Photo Archives - LIFE

Gordon Parks on Alberto Giacometti and his “Skeletons in Space”

Bill Syken — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 15:28:50 +0000

In its heyday LIFE magazine introduced a great many artists to the country at large. Perhaps the most famous instance of this was its star-making profile of Jackson Pollock, but there are many other examples.

In 1951 LIFE showcased the sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Like Pollock, Giacometti’s works were instantly recognizable. His style was bluntly captured in LIFE’s headline: “Skeletal Sculpture: Artist Whittles Men to Bone.”

The story described how Giacometti arrived what it called his ‘stalagmatic style”:

Sculptor Giacometti, son of Switzerland’s foremost impressionist painter, started out 30 years ago producing conventional statues. But he lost his way among the innumerable details of the head and body which seemed to clutter up and conceal the underlying form of human beings. “I felt I needed to realize the whole,” he says. “A structure, a sharpness….a kind of skeleton in space.” To arrive at this “essence of man,” Giacometti gradually reduced his figures to pin size, then gradually stretched them out again to pipeline silhouettes whose slender fragility suggests the perishable nature of man himself.

For that story Giacometti posed for legendary LIFE staff photographer Gordon Parks. The meeting of these two artists resulted in one of the most popular images for sale in the LIFE photo store.

That image is part of this gallery, as are several other frames that Parks took of Giacometti and of his work. Also included here is a photo of a Giacometti work taken by Yale Joel that cropped up in the background of a LIFE story from 1960 about art collector G. David Thompson. He was one of the most prominent art collectors of the 20th century, and he owned 70 works by Giacometti.

Alberto Giacometti in his studio, surrounded by his sculptures, 1951.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sculptor Alberto Giacometti in Paris, 1951.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, 1951.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti in his studio, 1951.

Gordon Parks.Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, surrounded by sculptures in his studio, 1951.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A Giacometti sculpture on a Parisian street, 1951.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

These Giacometti animal sculptures lived not far from Giacometti’s Paris studio, 1951.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sculptor Alberto Giacometti, 1951.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Art collector G. David Thompson, 1959, with a Giacometti sculpture; he owned 70 works by the artist.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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Ella Fitzgerald: The First Lady of Song

Bill Syken — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 15:35:36 +0000

Ella Fitzgerald has been described as “perhaps the quintessential jazz singer.” This live performance of “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love)” is one of the countless examples of Ella Fitzgerald thrilling an audience with her talents.

In 1955 LIFE’s Eliot Elisofon photographed Fitzgerald for a story on the top jazz stars of the day, and she was the only woman included in the group. LIFE wrote of her, “Ella Fitzgerald, who sings love ballads daintily, can roar on like a trombone through a jazz classic. Her most famous number is “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” but it is her many hotter songs that keep her the first lady of jazz year after year.”

In 1958 LIFE staff photographer Yale Joel took his turn shooting Fitzgerald. He caught her performing at Mister Kelly’s, a renowned jazz club in Chicago. The photo places the viewer in a front row seat. Fitzgerald, elegantly dressed, sings with her eyes closed and hand to heart on a low stage that has her nearly at level with the audience. That photo is one of the most popular images in LIFE’s print store, which is a tribute to both Joel’s skill and Fitzgerald’s enduring popularity—several of her songs have more than 100 million plays on Spotify.

Included here are several other of Joel’s shots from Mister Kelly’s, and also other instances in which LIFE’s photographers documented this great artist.

Singer Ella Fitzgerald holding a basket of flowers as she sings A-Tisket, A-Tasket in front of backdrop, 1946.

Eliot Eilsofon/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald performed at Mister Kelly’s nightclub in Chicago, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Bathed in red light, American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald performed her eyes closed, at Mister Kelly’s nightclub, Chicago, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Ella Fitzgerald performed at Mister Kelly’s nightclub in Chicago, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ella Fitzgerald performing at Mister Kelly’s nightclub in Chicago, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ella Fitzgerald mingled with people who had come to hear her perform at the opening night of the Bop City nightclub in New York City, April 1949.

.Martha Holmes/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Songbird Ella Fitzgerald sang at opening at the Bop City nightclub in New York City, 1949.

Martha Holmes/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ella Fitzgerald sang during opening night of Bop City nightclub in New York City, April 1949.

Martha Holmes/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ella Fitzgerald at the old Madison Square Garden in New York on the night Marilyn sang to John F. Kennedy, May 1962.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Not published in LIFE. Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, 1954." caption="Eliot Elisofon/Life Pictures/Shutterstock" title="Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, 1954." src="https://static.life.com/wp-content/uploads/migrated/2013/04/17_01144127.jpg" alt="Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, 1954." />

Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, 1954.

Eliot Elisofon/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

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The Strangest College Class Ever

Bill Syken — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 14:16:47 +0000

Picking out the oddest offerings from the wide world of academia has become something of a modern pastime. Lists of such courses abound online, including this one from U.S. News and World Report that includes such headscratchers as “Paintball Kinesiology” and “DJing and Turntablism.”

I mean, what happened to studying Plato, right?

In 1958 LIFE magazine was early to the party with its story about a class being offered at Smith College, the highly respected all-female school in Northampton, Massachusetts. The headline: “College Class in Luggage Lifting.”

That headline, like many of today’s online lists, was meant to provoke a reaction. Smith College wasn’t exactly offering a full-blown course in the proper way to lift a bag, but luggage handling was a real addition of the college’s physical education curriculum.

The LIFE story explained why Smith was suddenly concerned about its students handling luggage the right way:

For years Smith’s physical education department has been teaching posture to its freshman. But when redcap porter service was cut back at the nearby railway stations, the college found that the girls were displaying un-Smithlike sags and sways as they struggled with their suitcases. To preserve both appearances and backs, the college added baggage handling to the course.

Perhaps the most interest aspect of this story, viewed all these years later, is the idea of what “un-Smithlike” behavior constituted in the 1950s. The course also created an irresistible photo opportunity that LIFE sent staff photographer Yale Joel to capitalize on. He took photos in both the gym class itself, and of students applying their knowledge in an out-of-use car of the Boston and Maine Railroad.

The conclusion of the LIFE story is very much of its time, which was a decade before the women’s liberation movement began to hit its stride. One freshman dismissed the need for a baggage-handling course by saying, “A girl who tries can almost always find some man to help her with her luggage.”

Assistant professor Anne Delano led a class on physical education that included instruction on handling luggage, with the motto “Use Your Head and Save Your Back” written out on a chalkboard, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Improving back flexibility was part of the physical education program at Smith College designed to make students better able to handle their own luggage, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Smith College college practiced the proper method for lifting luggage with bags that contained 12-pound weights, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Smith College students posed for a photo for a story about them being taught the best way to handle a suitcase, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Undergraduates at Smith College practiced the proper method for handling luggage, a skill they were taught as part of the school’s physical education program, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Smith College girls received instruction in the proper way to handle suitcases after redcap service was removed from local train stations, 1958.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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The State of Men’s Hair, 1969

Bill Syken — Wed, 03 May 2023 14:26:09 +0000

In 1969 LIFE photographer Yale Joel set out to document men’s hairstyles, and the result is this glorious cache of photos. His story never ran in the magazine (one imagines the legendary photographer having a conversation with the magazine editors in which they say “Uh, Yale, these are cool, but we’re kind of busy with the moon landing and Woodstock and the war in Vietnam and the Charles Manson killings and all that.”)

But all these decades down the road, these photos of men’s hairstyles are their own window into that wild era. It’s as if the hair was an externalization of a world gone wild, where nothing was neat or simple.

Because this story never ran, we don’t much about these men that Yale Joel photographed, although the rich variety of faces suggests that he was taking pictures of ordinary people rather than male models. There’s even some question of whether all of this hair is real. A few of the photos were taken in a salon where wigs are visible in the background, and one photo is of a woman wearing a glued-on mustache.

The ambiguity fits the era too. It was a time to question everything.

Men’s hair trends, 1969.

Yale Joel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Woman trying on a moustache piece, 1969.

Yale Joel/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Men’s hair trends, 1969.

Yale Joel/LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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This Is What It Was Like to Break Into Modeling as a Woman of Color in 1969

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 09:00:32 +0000

In October of 1969, a LIFE Magazine cover story explored a noteworthy change underway in the fashion business: women of color were not only more visible than ever as models, but they were also taking charge behind the scenes. In one of the first salvos of a conversation that is still very much ongoing about how to bring diversity to the fashion world, and why that matters the women featured in the story were working toward a future where, as the director of one agency put it, “a model agency gets a call for a brunette and can just send over a Black girl.”

At the time, though progress was still being made, Black models still made less than white models simply because they got less work, and per LIFE in 1968 less than 10% of all TV commercials in the U.S. involved any Black people at all. And yet, for those on the front lines of change, it was an exciting time at least that was the experience for Charlene Dash, then 20, one of the models featured in the story.

Dash, who went back to school after quitting the modeling world and ended up getting her master’s degree, went on to work for the Department of Education. In 2017, she told LIFE what it was like to live through that time:

In 1969, I was a kid.

I’d had a job with Shell Oil Company and I went to school at night, at Hunter College. And one of the women who worked in keypunch one day came to work in pants. She had a pantsuit on. This was shocking. How could you come to work in pants? She said, “Well, I handed in my resignation. I’m going to be a model.” One Sunday not long after that, in the Times, in the Sunday section, I opened it up and there was her picture. I was like, “If she can do it, I can do it.”

I did a little research, and I heard there was a new agency called Wilhelmina, so I went to her, and she told me, “Oh no, we have Naomi [Sims] and everybody wants Naomi.” I had no idea who Naomi was. I hadn’t seen her. But while I was sitting there waiting to speak with Wilhelmina, a woman came in and she just sort of floated in, and she looked so beautiful, and everybody said, “How was Paris?” And I thought, this is a dream world.

So I went to [Ford Models]. I had two or three fuzzy pictures and they looked at the pictures, put them to the side, looked at me, and they sent me over to a woman named Dee Edwards. She was in charge of the new girls. She said, ‘Call me tomorrow and I’m going to send you out and we’ll get you some pictures.’ That’s how I started. I remember distinctly that they said, ‘Would you work for $250 [a week]? There’s a designer in town at the Plaza and she doesn’t have a lot of money but for $250 you would [spend your days there] and show the clothes.’ Now, $250 a week in those days I had been making $175 for two-weeks” work! It was such fun, and making $50 a day!? I was rich. Rich! One of the people who came in was the Baron de Gunzburg, from Vogue. We went out, we did what we had to do, and that evening I got a call from the agency apparently he went back to Vogue and told Mrs. Vreeland that he saw me, and I got an interview with Mrs. Vreeland. Now we’re really in dream world.

I went to see her, and she was just like everything you’d read about. She was very dramatic. She had two pairs of glasses. “Come closer,” she’d say, and she’d put on one pair, and then “go back” and she’d put on another. She wrote down an address and said to be at that address next week. That turned into six pages in Vogue.

Now the agency had something to sell. They could say I’d already done XYZ. But there were still no pictures. So they said, go see Gideon at [Richard] Avedon’s studio. So I went over with my little fuzzy pictures to see Gideon. Cybill Shepherd was also there she’d just won Model of the Year and we’re sitting on the sofa. Avedon came out and I thought it was Gideon, because that was who I told the receptionist I was there to see. He looked at my little fuzzy pictures and he said, O.K., and then I left. When I left I ran into another model and said that I’d gone to see Gideon and she said, “Oh, he’s nice,” and she described him I said, “That’s not who I saw! She said, “You saw Avedon!” And he booked me.

It wasn’t that I was doing anything special, but it was the right time at the right place and I didn’t even know what I was wandering into. It was wonderful. I have good memories.

They were actively looking for models of color. We did something that was in the Times and the art director said that they’d even checked the whole concept with the Black Panther Party, which I thought was funny, but they wanted to make sure that they didn’t say anything wrong. Everybody was very nervous and very cognizant that they were doing this and they were going to do it right.

I did an ad for Neiman Marcus, and they told me I’d be the first person of color to do an ad for them, and they made a big deal out of it. I worked with a photographer I’d worked with at Vogue and in the end you couldn’t even tell I was Black, the way it was lit, but they were happy they had stepped over this threshold. And I was honored.

[When I was growing up] I used to read Ebony magazine, and everybody was Black. I thought that was great, that you read Ebony magazine you see Black models doing everything. [But] for anyone to see someone who’s looking beautifully dressed isn’t it every little girl’s fantasy? You want to look good no matter what color you are. I watch commercials and everybody’s represented in commercials today, and that wasn’t the way it was. We had Julia and that was a big deal, but now you see everybody. Grandparents with children of color. Gay couples having dinner and doing regular things. It’s just people. It’s wonderful. And I know when I get my Neiman Marcus catalog it’s not just one person of color in there. It’s lots of people Asian, Hispanic, Black. It’s wonderful.

I remember once I complained to the art director at Avon. I said, “I’m booked for maybe one day, and everybody else here is booked for a week. Why can’t I be?” And he said, “You know, Charlene, I have a logistics problem. We have 12 pages and we can’t put you on every page.”

But the blonde could be. I thought, well, a logistics problem. I didn’t like it. I wanted to work.

Obviously they don’t have a logistics problem anymore. That’s progress.

October 17, 1969 cover of LIFE magazine with Naomi Sims featured.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Naomi Sims got her big break when she appeared in a TV commercial with two other girls.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Outtake from “Black Models Take Center Stage” cover story.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Elizabeth of Toro is the daughter of a king the late king of Toro, one of the four kingdoms of Uganda.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “In the busy offices of Black Beauty, Director Betty Foray talks to ad agency account executive about models for a layout.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Charlene Dash, 20, was signed a year ago by the Ford Model Agency, one of the most prestigious, and is already the top money-maker among black models. She has done six TV commercials, the most recent for Clairol cosmetics (above).”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Charlene Dash, 20, is shown making up for an assignment.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Professional model Gloria Smith wears the crown in which she was acclaimed winner of the 1969 Miss Black America contest in Madison Square Garden.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Tamara Dobson, 21 and six feet tall, was signed by an agency her first day in New York and in two weeks had her first big job, a TV commercial.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “You see before you what may well be the most persuasive demonstration of successful black power ever assembled. If these 39 models, employed by a new agency called Black Beauty were to all work an eight-hour day, their combined bill would be $16,000.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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When A Young Gloria Steinem Played the Pop-Culture Pundit

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 10:30:30 +0000

Today, Gloria Steinem is a feminist icon whose imprimatur can bestow the highest level of progressive cred.

So it’s worth remembering that Steinem’s own history in the public eye began with her career as a journalist which included the early moment when she showed, for the 1965 LIFE magazine story for which these photos were taken, that she could bestow her seal of approval on all kinds of things.

The lengthy article, which ran in the Aug. 20 issue that year, was a primer on Pop Culture—capital P, capital C. Steinem’s definition of the term fastened it to “anything currently in fashion, all or most of whose ingredients are familiar to the public-at-large.” In other words, you might not know how to do the latest dance, but if it’s pop you’ll still be able to recognize the refraction of the zeitgeist.

“A thing is either widely recognizable or it isn’t,” she wrote, “and whether it is good or bad needn’t be held against it.”

At the time, Steinem was only a few years into her career as a big-name writer, having gotten a jump start in 1963 with a story for Show magazine in which she went undercover as a Playboy bunny. (She would later say that she regretted the assignment at the time, as it led editors away from thinking of her as a serious writer.) Prior to that, after graduating from Smith in 1956, she had gone to India for two years and worked in Massachusetts for “a group encouraging American students to attend Communist youth festivals abroad” which was later revealed to be connected to the CIA. And yet, though she had only burst on the magazine scene not long before, by the time this article ran in LIFE her byline had appeared in a wide range of outlets and, as TIME noted that same summer, Steinem, then 30, was the most successful example of an experiment by Glamour magazine in which the journalists also served as models.

She did the same here, posing as figures in the board game of pop culture though, as she noted, pop was no game.

It was serious business, and with typical incisiveness she explained how what might seem to be frivolous stuff was really a sign of major generational shifts taking place in the United States. For example, whereas American culture had once trickled down from on high, it had become the case during the period of postwar prosperity that many of the most obvious markers of that culture (clothing or golf, for example) could be afforded by wide swathes of the population. When money ceased to be a prerequisite for mainstream cool, it was possible for cool to come up from the bottom instead. “The proliferation of money and the collapse of the old caste system automatically downgraded those who had little but cash and ancestors to offer,” as Steinem put it.

Better sources of cool included African-American culture, camp culture, teenage culture and British culture.

What exactly that translated to, however, was more complicated. The full list is worth reading, but even just the highlights are pricelessly spot-on. The Twist was out; the Frug was on the way out; the Jerk was on the way in but only because the Twist had cleared a path for new dances to come and go quickly. “Jive” had stopped referring to jazz; it now meant “phony.” The Rolling Stones were in; the Beatles were already on the way to becoming Classic Pop rather than of-the-moment. The New Yorker and Disneyland had both been pop from the beginning and always would be. Meanwhile, football was so out it was back in.

Few could say what would be next, but Steinem expressed a fear that will likely resonate with 2017’s pop connoisseurs too: Was the cycle of in-ness and out-ness speeding up so much that it was becoming impossible to keep up? Her best tip for the overwhelmed was just to find a “tolerant teenager” to act as a source.

“In your new state of irreproachable In-ness, anything you do is In,” she concluded. “Which leaves you with just one rule to remember: to be Pop Culture, it’s got to be Fun.”

As for Steinem herself, by 1971, she had helped launch Ms. magazine and was one of feminism’s most recognizable faces. She may have had her finger on the pop pulse, but her In-ness proved to be anything but passing.

From “The Ins and Outs of Pop Culture,” an article by Gloria Steinem in the Aug. 20, 1965 issue of LIFE magazine. This image did not appear in the story.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

From “The Ins and Outs of Pop Culture” an article by Gloria Steinem. This image did not appear in the story.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Contact sheet from “The Ins and Outs of Pop Culture” an article by Gloria Steinem in the Aug. 20, 1965 issue of LIFE magazine.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection

Her pop culture suggestions included “boning up on World War II memorabilia.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Steinem suggested for people who want to be In “…learning to look at and/or wearing Op Art (Dramamine helps).”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Of going to pro football games, Steinem wrote, “try thinking of them as improvisational theater.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Contact sheet from “The Ins and Outs of Pop Culture.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection

She described skateboarding as “dangerous enough for James Bond.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The end goal of the course, she wrote, was “arriving at a state so In that you can relax and forget about whether you’re in or out.”

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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