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Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines
by Carol Kino
A riveting dual biography of the McLaughlins—identical twin sisters who became groundbreaking photographers in New York during the glamorous magazine golden age of the 1930s and 40s—for fans of Ninth Street Women and The Barbizon.
The McLaughlin twins were trailblazing female photographers, celebrated in their time as stars in their respective fields, but have largely been forgotten since. Here, in Double Click, author Carol Kino provides us with a fascinating window into the golden era of magazine photography and the first young women's publications, bringing these two brilliant women and their remarkable accomplishments to vivid life.
Frances was the only female photographer on staff in Condé Nast's photo studio, hired just after Irving Penn, and became known for streetwise, cinema verité-style work, which appeared in the pages of Glamour and Vogue. Her sister Kathryn's surrealistic portraits filled the era's new "career girl" magazines, including Charm and Mademoiselle. Both twins married Harper's Bazaar photographers and socialized with a glittering crowd that included the supermodel Lisa Fonssagrives and the photographer Richard Avedon. Kino uses their careers to illuminate the lives of young women during this time, an early twentieth-century moment marked by proto-feminist thinking, excitement about photography's burgeoning creative potential, and the ferment of wartime New York. Toward the end of the 1940s, and moving into the early 1950s, conventionality took over, women were pushed back into the home, and the window of opportunity began to close. Kino renders this fleeting moment of possibility in gleaming multi-color, so that the reader cherishes its abundance, mourns its passing, and gains new appreciation for the talent that was fostered at its peak.
Pulling back the curtain on an electric, creative time in New York's history, and rich with original research, Double Click is cultural reportage and biography at its finest.
"Engrossing… Kino paints a textured portrait of artists who came of age amid sea changes in magazine publishing and women's cultural roles, and helped transform the way Americans consumed information and encountered fashion…Fashion, photography, and pop culture aficionados will be captivated." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Engaging… A colorful cultural history emerges from two eventful lives." —Kirkus Review
"What makes Double Click such a revelation is Carol Kino's precise and engaging narrative. An exquisitely intimate portrait of the McLaughlin sisters and their work, this is a beautiful biography, richly detailed and full of life. A remarkable accomplishment."
—Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove
"Carol Kino's Double Click is a fascinating, rich, and beautifully written tale of two twentieth century women photographers navigating a world of images that focused on women in front of the camera without encouraging them to step behind it... . Kino has written a story that is inspirational and thrilling. Double Click is a joy to read."
—Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women and Madonna: A Rebel Life
"Carol Kino presents a lively, much-needed double biography of the female twin photographers whose careers flourished magnificently during wartime and who then had to adapt once the men came home. A unique, and uniquely female, window into the mid-twentieth-century art world in New York."
—Sherill Tippins, author of February House
This information about Double Click was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Carol Kino's writing about art, artists, the art world, and contemporary culture has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Town & Country, and just about every major art magazine. She was formerly a fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at the New York Public Library and the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program. She grew up on the Stanford campus in Northern California and lives in Manhattan. Double Click is her first book.
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