LIFE was published weekly from 1883-1972, originally as a humor and general interest magazine similar to the British PUCK magazine. When Henry Luce (founder of TIME magazine in 1923) bought LIFE in 1936, he changed its focus to weekly news with an emphasis on photojournalism.
With condensed text captions for ~50 pages of photographs, the magazine printed on heavily coated paper, sold for 10 cents in 1936.
LIFE went on to dominate the photojournalism market for the next 40 years, at one point selling more than 13.5 million copies a week.