LIFE Magazine
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The Last Quiet Frame: Robert Wiles and the Haunting Aftermath of Evelyn McHale’s Fall
Captured just four minutes after her fatal descent from the Empire State Building on May 1, 1947, Robert Wiles’ extraordinary photograph of 23-year-old Evelyn McHale resting on a crushed limousine remains one of history’s most arresting and unsettling visual documents.
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Inside the Lab That Cracked Instant Color: Howard G. Rogers and Polaroid’s 5,000 Bottles
Photographed by Fritz Goro for Life magazine in 1963, Polaroid research director Howard G. Rogers stands before five thousand chemical bottles that enabled the invention of instant color film.
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“The Most Beautiful Suicide”: The Story Behind Robert Wiles’ 1947 Photograph of Evelyn McHale
Lying cradled in the crumpled roof of a United Nations limousine outside the Empire State Building on May 1, 1947, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale appears strikingly serene in a photograph captured by Robert Wiles just minutes after her tragic death.
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The Sand of Buna Beach: The Photograph That Confronted a Nation with the Cost of War
Three dead American soldiers lie half-buried in the wet sand of New Guinea in George Strock’s quiet, devastating 1943 photograph—the first image of fallen US troops allowed to reach the American public during World War II.