In the preface to his new book Moment by Moment, LIFE photographer John Loengard notes that the thing about a good photograph is that it cannot be repeated. What it captures will never happen again, though now it is frozen in time by the image.
“That may explain why an image of a brief moment, an instant in time, can hold our interest forever,” he writes.
Loengard’s latest book is a survey that takes a closer look at a variety of the many iconic images he has created during the last 60 years. It is filled with quiet, intimate moments, from a laughing Marilyn Monroe to a young boy turning his head at the sound of his mother calling. All of his subjects, whether famous or unknown, are treated with the same careful, thoughtful eye catching the moments in between.
Pictured on the cover is the famous photo of the Beatles in a swimming pool at Miami Beach in 1964. This photo in fact never ran on the cover of LIFE magazine – although as illustrated here, it is certainly cover worthy but ran in the back of the book as a Miscellany. (“I never thought it was a terrific photograph,” Loengard told LIFE.com a few years ago. “It’s not a very expressive picture at all, in my opinion. But given the history and the appeal of the people in it, it keeps cropping up, year after year.”)
John Loengard was a staff photographer for LIFE magazine from 1961 to 1971 and went on to be the Picture Editor from 1978-1987. Moment by Moment was published by Thames and Hudson.
Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr of the Beatles took a dip in a swimming pool.
Photo by John Loengard/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation.
Louis Armstrong got a beer and a haircut at his neighborhood barbershop in Queens, New York City, 1965.
John Loengard
Marilyn Monroe blessed the cornerstone-laying ceremony at the Time-LIFE building with her presence. New York City, 1957.
John Loengard/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation
England’s Queen Elizabeth II and Duke of Edinburgh wait with their hosts, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and his son, the Crown Prince, before they enter the New Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion. Axum, Ethiopia, 1965.
John Loengard
The boy turns his head as he hears his mother’s call from down the street. Manchester, England, 1968.
John Loengard
Dr. Timothy Leary with his wife, at the commune where he lived near Palm Springs, California, 1969.
John Loengard
Buckminster Fuller, architect and inventor, ferries houseguests to Bear Island, which his grandmother bought in 1904 and remained his family seat; Penobscot Bay, Maine, 1970.
John Loengard
Builder Victor Westphall constructed a chapel in memory of his son David, a Marine lieutenant killed four years earlier in Vietnam. Eagle Nest, New Mexico, 1972.
John Loengard
At twenty-two, Twiggy said she was quitting modeling for acting. “You can’t be a clothes hanger for your entire life,” she said. Outside New York City, 1972.
John Loengard
Tom Nesbitt tends his bar. Doheny & Nesbitts Pub, Dublin, 1987.
John Loengard
Richard Avedon sits in his studio before a wall of miscellaneous clippings and his portrait of oil field worker Roberto Lopez. New York City, 1994.
John Loengard
