DOUBLE CLICK: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines, by Carol Kino
I’m going to toss out some names: Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Erwin Blumenfeld, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Lee Miller, Irving Penn, Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Franny McLaughlin, Fuffy McLaughlin. If you recognize everyone but Franny and Fuffy, you know something about photography. And if, by chance, you recognize them all, then you’re probably Carol Kino, the author of “Double Click,” a book ostensibly about Franny and Fuffy.
Franny and Fuffy were identical twins born in Brooklyn in 1919. After their father, Frank, died in the flu pandemic, their mother, Kitty, “consecrated them to the Virgin Mary and dressed them up as living dolls, always in showy, perfectly matched clothes.” They were often photographed like that.
In one picture of the twins, aged 10, they pose “with an old Kodak, Fuffy holding it and smiling and Franny affecting a fashion model stance, with one hip jutting out.” This photo foretold the girls’ path. They spent their lives on both sides of the camera, having their pictures taken together, making portraits of each other and eventually working as fashion photographers. Fuffy, whose given name was Kathryn, became a freelance photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, Junior Bazaar, Charm and Mademoiselle. Franny was the first female staff photographer in the Condé Nast studio, working for Glamour and Vogue.
From birth to marriage, Franny and Fuffy led lives that were inseparable and practically indistinguishable. Both graduated at the top of their Connecticut high school class, befriended a young John F. Kennedy, and attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in an era when product design, corporate identity and Surrealism were all the rage. They had matching clothes and matching careers; before they made it as photographers, the twins even shared one camera, a Voigtlӓnder Brilliant. At one point, they also shared a boyfriend, “the sexy lensman Jimmy Abbe,” whom they both called “Daddy.” (His analyst made him pick one; he chose Fuffy.)
