Vintage Houston Comes to Life Archive

This 1946 Dmitri Kessel photo of some not-long-vacant Houston property is just one of a half-million images from the Life magazine photo archives that are now only a Google search away. Google is announcing that the entire collection of photos taken for Life magazine — about 10 million in all — will be available within the next few months. About 97 percent of these images have never been seen by the general public.

The images are available from a simple Google image search. You can single out the Life images by adding “source:life” to your search or by starting at this gateway.

Houston photophile Robert Kimberly, who’s been poring through the collection, says

There are loads of Houston pictures, but add “TX” or Texas” to narrow a search to the city. Otherwise you’ll be seeing lots of “Whitney.”