Look (American magazine)
Look (American magazine)
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Look (American magazine)

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Look (American magazine)

Look was a biweekly, general-interest magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa, from 1937 to 1971, with editorial offices in New York City. It had an emphasis on photographs and photojournalism in addition to human interest and lifestyle articles. It published many important articles about racial injustice and the civil rights movement. A large-sized magazine of 11 in × 14 in (280 mm × 360 mm), it was a direct competitor to market leader Life. Look ceased publication in 1971.

Gardner "Mike" Cowles Jr. (1903–1985), the magazine's co-founder (with his brother John) and first editor, was executive editor of The Des Moines Register and The Des Moines Tribune. When the first issue went on sale in early 1937, it sold 705,000 copies.

Although planned to begin with the January 1937 issue, the actual first issue of Look to be distributed was the February 1937 issue, numbered as Volume 1, Number 2. It was published monthly for five issues (February–May 1937), then switched to biweekly starting with the May 11, 1937 issue. Page numbering on early issues counted the front cover as page one. Early issues, subtitled Monthly Picture Magazine, carried no advertising.

The unusual format of the early issues featured layouts of photos with long captions or very short articles. The magazine's backers described it as "an experiment based on the tremendous unfilled demand for extraordinary news and feature pictures". It was aimed at a broader readership than Life, promising trade papers that Look would have "reader interest for yourself, for your wife, for your private secretary, for your office boy".

From 1946 to 1970, Look published the Football Writers Association of America College All America Football Team and brought players and selected writers to New York City for a celebration. During that 25-year period, the FWAA team was introduced on national television shows by Bob Hope, Steve Allen, Perry Como, and others.

Its January 24, 1956, article "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi", included murder confessions from J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, who had been acquitted in 1955 of killing 14-year-old boy Emmett Till.

Look was the first major magazine for largely white audiences that hired an African American staff writer, Ernest Dunbar, in 1954, and published the first photograph of a Black fashion model, Bani Yelverton, in 1958.

Look became particularly progressive politically in the 1960s under editors Daniel Mich and Patricia Carbine, who became the first woman to be executive editor of a large American publication that was not a "women's magazine."

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