Alfred Eisenstaedt
VJ Day, Times Square, NY, August 14, 1945
Though February 21, 2026, the Staley Wise Gallery in New York City is running a show called “Looking at LIFE,” which features some of the most popular photos from the history of the magazine.
In this brief interview, the gallery’s director, George Kocis, explains how the show came together.
LIFE: How did you select which photos would appear in this show?
GEORGE KOCIS: We made print-outs of every single photograph available from the LIFE archive – over 600 images! We also considered images by photographers Harry Benson, Abe Frajndlich, and William Helburn, who we work with directly and whose work appeared in the magazine. From this, we chose 75 or so of our favorites, and pretty quickly discovered thematic groups and stories that we could tell and which would inform the physical design of the exhibition. It was our privilege to have access to such a vast body of work, but painful to not include everything that we wanted due to space constraints!
LIFE: What would you describe as the distinctive appeal of the LIFE brand of photography?
GK: LIFE was particularly great at reflecting the “real life” of its readers right alongside images of aspiration and glamour. Our exhibition includes this kind of diversity as well – we have photographs of baseball fans in Brooklyn, oil field workers in Texas, and World War II soldiers saying goodbye to their wives at Penn Station – but also photographs of Al Pacino and Diane Keaton shooting “The Godfather”, Princess Margaret’s wedding, and Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn at the Academy Awards. There are even pictures that combine those perspectives, such as Peter Stackpole’s 1947 photograph of actor Jimmy Stewart in his Colonel’s uniform at his father’s hardware store in Pennsylvania when he left Hollywood to enlist in the Army Air Corps.
LIFE: The show has been up since December. What kind of reactions have you had from visitors?
GK: Many visitors to the exhibition have said that they remember waiting for LIFE magazine to arrive in the mail each week! We’ve also had a few editors that worked for the magazine and people currently and formerly in the publishing industry come to see the exhibition and that’s been very interesting to hear their perspective and experience. Younger visitors don’t share that nostalgia, of course . . . they’re as familiar with the brand of “LIFE” as they are with McDonald’s and Nike, but they have rarely seen the magazine or these images before.
LIFE: Are there particular images in the show that stand out to you as remarkable, or that exemplify LIFE’s appeal?
GK: There’s hardly a more iconic image than the “VJ-Day Kiss” by Alfred Eisenstaedt, which has been a well-known symbol of patriotism and joy since it was taken in 1945, but which has also more recently been parodied by the Simpsons and inspired contemporary painter Amy Sherald. LIFE’s photographers also had the opportunity to highlight an outsider’s perspective of the familiar, which is why Leonard McCombe’s picture of men enjoying some ice cream in Iowa is unexpectedly poignant – as a Brit who recently obtained his US citizenship, McCombe noted that “I began to notice the difference in my own countrymen. I’d never even seen men eating ice cream (that was only a children’s treat in England). But by now . . . I feel I am a citizen of the place where I belong”. My personal favorite in the exhibition might be John Dominis’ photograph of a priest ice skating – another great union of a familiar subject in an unexpected context.
LIFE: What has your gallery done to display these photos in a way that gives their historical context?
GK: In addition to the photographs themselves, the exhibition includes scans from the actual pages of LIFE magazine with corresponding anecdotes about some of the photographers and the imagIn addition to the photographs themselves, the exhibition includes scans from the actual pages of LIFE magazine with corresponding anecdotes about some of the photographers and the images – most of which are included on our website, too. This collection of work is informative and educational – and also entertaining and simply fun to see! We hope that visitors will enjoy each of these photographer’s contributions to LIFE magazine and recognize these images’ historical and cultural significance. Staley-Wise Gallery has always celebrated photography that has appeared primarily in magazines, and this exhibition continues that tradition.
