When Google made an archive of Life magazine photographs available online in 2008 a significant number of heretofore unseen images of the New Hampshire presidential primary came to light.[1]  Some of these photographs date back to 1952, the earliest of the New Hampshire primaries that permitted citizens to vote for presidential candidates (instead of voting for delegates to the party conventions).  A great number of the Life images from that NH election – largely trained on the contest between Republicans Dwight Eisenhower and Robert Taft – were taken by Lisa Larsen, a promising pioneer photojournalist whose career ended far too quickly when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She was 35 at the time of her death in 1959.

This essay examines the photographic coverage of the New Hampshire primary that Life magazine published in March of 1952.[2]   There is a brief introduction to an understanding of political campaign photography as a genre of photojournalism.  Also discussed are the historical antecedents of these Life images of presidential campaigning and what were once common ideas about the election mechanisms controlled by political power brokers or gatekeepers.  The analysis of the Life coverage highlights the remarkable focus on women that Larsen lent to the photo essay.