After graduating Harvard University in the mid 1950's with a distinguished degree and a promising career on the Harvard Crimson newspaper, John Loengard, photographer, started freelancing for LIFE Magazine. In 1961 when the editors decided to infuse new blood into the aging staff, they asked Loengard to join the well-respected group. His assignments lead him to many diverse parts of the country and subject matter including memorable essays on Georgia O'Keefe, the Shakers, a day in Miami with a new band called The Beatles, and the Vanishing Cowboy, to name just a few. He became one of LIFE's most distinctive staff photographers, which included Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Peter Stackpole, Thomas McAvoy, Carl Mydans, Ralph Morse, and Andreas Feininger.
In 1972, when LIFE suspended publishing the magazine as a weekly, Loengard became a member of the parent company Time Inc.'s Magazine development group. One of his projects was People magazine, where he began serving as the first picture editor in 1974.
When LIFE revived as a monthly in 1978, John Loengard became only the magazine's seventh picture editor. He remained in that capacity until 1987. This respected photographer and photo editor has been quoted as saying, "Like doctors, photographers work with what is present. I suspect our chief emotions are anticipation, frustration, and patience, balanced by a marvelous sense of elation when things go right--when we think we've captured within a photograph some missing feeling, some sense of beauty, or bit of mystery in the fabric of life."
More recently, Loengard was a freelance photographer and author of a number of books including Pictures Under Discussion, which won the Ansel Adams Award for book photography in 1987, Celebrating the Negative, and Georgia O'Keeffe at Ghost Ranch. His book, LIFE Photographers: What They Saw, was named one of the year's ten top books by the New York Times. His most recent book, The Great LIFE Photographers was released in October 2004 and was favorably reviewed by CNN, Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, and others.
GALLERY M exclusively represents the photography of John Loengard in the Rocky Mountain Region and online.
