[Kingzjester]

I've been toying with oblique political themes in my art for a while now (such as this little baby) and I've been looking for more and more compelling symbols to toy with. On that note, books of good old, high-res news photography are really hard to come by. Since the internet often proves amazingly unhelpful, for every sketch, print or painting I tend to spend days at the library looking through ridiculous piles of reference material, looking for shit of just the right fidelity. For example, I went through months and months of the relevant era of the New York Times and the Washington Post microfilms looking for the famous photo of Nixon getting off the plane and doing his victory salute. Not being able to find it anywhere, I had to photograph myself in a suit and superimpose a random publicity glossy.

I need reference books with a lot of ripe historical personages (people, American or otherwise, who have become symbols), and also old photographs that reverberate in everyone's consciousness--you know, relevant news photography. I wouldn't mind DVD-ed documentaries either--frames of which can be captured for my purposes.

Any specific things I should look for, or pointers on how to look, or where to look?

[Melanie68]

Life Photographers: What They Saw

Great News Photos and the Stories Behind Them

The World's great news photos, 1840-1980

Great moments in news photography, from the historical files of the National Press Photographers Association

These are from Alibris.com. I searched for news photography. You might try Powells as well.

I hope someone else pipes in too. It's early and my researching faculties aren't 100%

[Kingzjester]

Domo arigato.

[Shodan]

For some reason Reuters sent my dad some of their photography books awhile back - fascinating stuff. 'Frontlines' sounds like it'd be the most relevant to your research.

Nice milk carton by the way!