John Ames Mitchell Remembered in LIFE Magazine

John Ames Mitchell Remembered in LIFE Magazine

After he died, LIFE Magazine published a tribute to the life and work of John Ames Mitchell, certainly evidencing great respect and admiration on the part of the many of the people he worked with during his prolific career. He worked successfully in a number of professions, first as an architect, and later, in pursuit of work truer to his tendencies, as the piece puts it, “to do what he enjoyed doing,” studying and working as a painter. Despite showing promising talent in each of these fields, he felt his artistic studies more valuably equipped him to go on to co-found LIFE Magazine, and moreover, to work well with other creatives, a number of whom would find great success after working with Mitchell and LIFE Publishing Company. While much of Mitchell’s career is preserved in the legacy of LIFE magazine, little information is available regarding his personal life, though Andrew Miller, the magazine’s co-founder, and Mitchell’s longtime business partner and friend, speaks to the high esteem that his colleagues and acquaintances held him in, “He loved the truth, and practiced continuously to make it prevail...He hated cruelty and pretence and all bogus infallibilities. He was considerate of everyone about him; affectionate, amusing, charming; maintaining about him an atmosphere in which minds could work with confidence and tranquility.”

San Francisco Public Library

LIFE Magazine

July 18, 1918

Andrew Miller

LIFE Magazine

English

Magazine