We left the middle of the 20th century behind decades ago, but the aesthetic of the time has remained a presence in countless ways — from the continued impact of mid-century modern furniture to the evocative fashion worn by people of the period. When considering that enduring look, it’s also worth discussing the people who brought that aesthetic into focus — literally, in some cases.

In her new book Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines, Carol Kino tells the story of twin sisters Frances and Kathryn McLaughlin, who made names for themselves with their photographic skills, as their work was well-represented in the publications of the time. It’s a fascinating look at the middle ground between art and commerce, with numerous insights into how the sisters helped the form evolve.

Throughout Double Click, the twins’ paths overlap with a host of historical figures, from Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. of the Tuskegee Airmen to F. Scott Fitzgerald. And some of the small details — including the post-World War II market for mass-market personal airplanes — make this trip back in time rewarding in some unexpected ways. Kino spoke with InsideHook about the book’s genesis, why the twins’ story remains relevant today and the archival research needed to make Double Click a reality.

InsideHook: Double Click opens with the McLaughlin twins being interviewed by Dick Cavett and being given comparable treatment to the likes of Toni Morrison and Federico Fellini. Both of those artists are still revered today, while the twins are likely not as familiar to readers in 2024. How did you first come to encounter their work and decide that they would be good subjects for a book?

Carol Kino: I have a friend who’s a publicist, and she works with a lot of photography galleries. So she told me about a show involving one of the twins, Franny or Frances, and her husband. It was a show of their work and their contemporaries, who were people like Man Ray, Erwin Blumenfeld and André Kertész. She convinced me to write about the show, and she also told me that there was a twin, and the whole family were photographers. So I wrote a couple of stories about that show.

Then at the opening, there was a small gallery devoted to family photos, and I just became completely entranced since they were all photographers. The photos were fantastic. They were also friends with Irving Penn and his wife Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, so there were a lot of photos of the Penns, photos that Lisa had taken of them. In that show, I met the son of one of the photographers who told me his grandfather had been a famous photographer.

It just seemed like a great story, first of all. Then while researching the original stories, I discovered that there had been many photographer couples during this period, which was fascinating to me — and sometimes the women had been more successful than the men. That also seemed really interesting, too — that they’d been successful and we didn’t know about them today.

Besides the photographers who you mentioned just now, Diane Arbus shows up in the narrative, Gordon Parks has a brief appearance towards the end — there’s this dizzying array of important figures in photography throughout the book.

It was also this really interesting period when European refugees were flooding into America. Americans were already trying to figure out what American art is going to be in relation to Europe. Europe had always dominated America. But Americans in painting and in photography were trying to determine what is an American art, and then these European refugees were arriving, so they were trying to figure this out, too. That was so interesting to me because I’m first-generation American, so I grew up trying to figure out, what’s a real American? I was kind of intrigued by all of these Europeans and Americans asking this question at the same time. 

The subtitle of your books uses the phrase “the golden age of magazines.” How did you determine what that timeframe was going to be like?

I think we kind of massaged the “golden age” for the purposes of the book. I think it’s debatable what the golden age was. It’s probably not right now, with magazines shutting down, but it’s debatable. I think there are exciting things happening on the web. 

I read so many magazines for this book and it was such an exciting time when photography started being introduced into these magazines and there was a different visual look to every issue. Things weren’t art-directed to the hilt. You could do something different every month. Photographers were allowed to take their own creative course. So I guess I think the golden age also went on into the 1950s and the 1960s. But it was really particularly creative during this 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s phase, I would say.

If I remember my art history somewhat correctly, in the second half of the 20th century, there was a fairly sizable sea change where photography began being viewed more as an art form in and of itself. Do you think if that had been more of an option earlier, the McLaughlin twins might have been somewhat better known? If they had had more opportunities to explore the fine art world?

Yeah, maybe. I think it was the 1970s when it started becoming perceived as an art form. I think they were always thinking about art, but I don’t think they necessarily expected what they did to become art. I think fashion photography as art happened quite a bit later, so I don’t know that they would have made the case for themselves making art. 

Franny, the one who worked at Condé Nast, developed dementia. So at the time that fashion photography started becoming considered art, she wasn’t in a position to promote her own work. I think that’s why she kind of missed the boat of being considered a great artist — which I think one could make the case that she is.

In the acknowledgements for Double Click, you thanked a lot of members of their families and extended families. Were the families all very supportive of the project? 

Yes, they were all into it. They didn’t always move at the same pace. I mean, I find when you’re writing journalism, people do call you back pretty quickly. When you’re writing a book — this is not necessarily the family — but I found people often say things like, “Oh yeah, when I go through my attic next summer, if I happen to find those pictures, I’ll get back to you.” So a lot of those people I had to give up on. Everything moves at a slower pace when you’re working on a book.

Kathryn’s family, the Abbes, amazingly gave me the key to their storage space. I was going there with Kathryn’s assistant, Chris. I went there with him in the beginning, and then they let me go there by myself, which was great because there were so many newspaper clippings that I needed to look at in detail, and it was hard to do that when I was chatting with Chris, who’s a really fun person.

The other twin’s archives are still in her apartment, and her grandson lives with them, so it wasn’t as accessible. But, yeah, they made it relatively easy for me to get at everything.

Were most of the archives you were going through familial and personal collections, or were you also going into magazine and newspaper archives?

I had a fellowship at the New York Public Library, a Cullman Fellowship, and not everything was there, remarkably, but the librarians there really helped me. One of the things that I needed to find was the first teen or college magazine, which was College Bazaar. A lot of the magazines had not been digitized, so I had to page through them and scan them for my own reference.

Mademoiselle and Charm are in the New York Public Library, not digitized. Glamour they did not have, so I had to go to the Condé Nast archives for that. I paged through 15 years’ worth of magazines for each of those, I think, which was really overwhelming. But College Bazaar did not exist — anywhere — and that was a real problem that the librarians at the New York Public Library helped me solve. We eventually found it in a library miscatalogued. It was just incredible.

The twins studied at Pratt, which turned out to have had one of the first photo labs in a school in America. I thought I would go to Pratt and say, “So tell me when it started.” And they said, “You’re welcome to go through all the school newspapers” — which had not been digitized at that point. “You’re welcome to go through all the school catalogs. You’re welcome to go through the faculty minutes.” I kept coming up against these subjects that nobody happened to have studied. I was just so depressing and daunting. I had this iPhone that I digitized all of those things with. 

Then I’d call up photo historians and say, “Do you know the history of Pratt?” And they’d say, “Isn’t that interesting? Nobody’s studied that. Isn’t that fascinating?” There was no way to go but forward if I wanted to fulfill my contract and write the book.

You mention in Double Click there was a magazine that was for winners of the contest to find the most talented college students. I was just amazed that there was a magazine with this very limited, very specific audience.

I think that was Smart Girl. I discovered that really early on by going to the Condé Nast archives. I had done research into the Prix de Paris, which was this famous prize that Vogue did. I think it started in 1935. It was a great competition.

There were lots of competitions for college-age girls at that time. The Prix de Paris was the grande dame of all these competitions. Joan Didion did it. Sylvia Plath. I think Ann Beattie did it. A lot of people. Meg Wolitzer, I think. I get it mixed up because Mademoiselle had these competitions, too. But I think that was the one. Jackie Kennedy — Jackie Bouvier at the time.

The person who was managing the archives had done research into that for her master’s thesis, I think. I don’t think anyone had looked at it since then. So in these archives, I discovered this magazine called Smart Girl. I just discovered several issues of this magazine and digitized them with my trusty iPhone, and there was tons of really interesting information in there.

Some of the other details that you share in the book about post-World War II society really floored me. I had no idea that there was a consumer market for private airplanes for commuters, for instance. 

All of this military equipment was being sold in department stores. Jeeps. Not guns, but other, more domestic kinds of equipment. I think Macy’s seventh floor had the airplane department. So the elevator operators would say, “Ladies’ lingerie, planes,” which was so wonderful.

It was this plane that steered like a car. I think they’d been developing it before the war, but then resources had to be diverted to the military. Then, after the war, there was all this money. America wasn’t in a depression mode anymore. Kathryn, the other twin, saved up her money during the war and bought her husband an engagement present of a plane. She said that’s why he married her. So they had a plane to fly between Montauk and all of their different jobs. 

There are also eerie echoes of the present day when you mention that, during that period, the marriage rate was going down in part because people had concerns over money. That felt very familiar.

Yeah, didn’t so much of it seem like today? I thought it was so relevant. And those essays by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s daughter — I loved that essay where she says, “Our profligate Jazz Age parents just don’t know the score, but we do.” She sounded like somebody complaining about her lousy Boomer parents. I just love that part.

You said you wrote a little bit about the sisters before starting work on this book. How much of this milieu were you aware of initially and how much did you have to discover on your own?

A lot of it was discovery on my own. In retrospect, it’s really interesting. As I was doing it, it was kind of painful because there was so much detective work. When I first met Kathryn’s youngest son, he actually turned out to live about 15 minutes away from my parents in California. Later on his mother became a very well-known photographer of children and he had these Better Homes and Gardens baby books that both twins had worked on. I couldn’t believe that his mother had photographed a lot of famous pharmaceutical ads that I’d seen growing up. I couldn’t believe how influential — I mean, those ads were part of my childhood — I just couldn’t believe the important role they played in society without me having been aware of it.

As you mentioned towards the end of the book, there have been periodic upticks in interest in the twins. Is there a hope that this book will also spark another revival and pique more interest in their work as well?

Definitely. I hope that it does. It seems to me that it’s kind of a missed opportunity if it doesn’t. I think it should, especially for the women who did not get any of the recognition that’s due to them.

It was also very interesting, as you pointed out a few times, that they were from much more of a working-class background than a lot of their peers.

They really did come along at a time when the aristocrats had been taking photographs — or people who added aristocratic names to or used their title as photographers. It was a moment when the career girl was being celebrated and these were genuine career girls, who took the subway to work every day, which was not the case for the female photographers who’d come before them.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

For a man who spends a lot of time around horses, Ivan McClellan isn’t much of a rider. “The last feedback I got was that I sit on a horse like a sack of potatoes,” he says. “I’m also a big fella, so people always put me on the biggest horse they have, some giant dinosaur of a horse. A fall from that height would be devastating, so I’m nervous. The horse knows I’m nervous. There’s a lot of work I need to do.”

Since 2015, when McClellan first attended the Roy LeBlanc Invitational in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, “the Super Bowl of Black rodeos”, the US photographer’s name has become synonymous with Black cowboy culture in the country.

“It was a culture I knew nothing about,” McClellan says. “I saw young men riding horses around with no shirt on, wearing diamond stud earrings, gold chains and Jordans. I saw women with braids and long acrylic nails riding 50mph. People were frying chicken, barbecuing, dancing … There was gospel music, R&B and hip-hop in the air. It was an incredible, otherwordly experience.”

For McClellan, who grew up in Kansas City but moved to Portland, Oregon in 2011, Black cowboy culture provided a sense of community he’d been lacking. “I saw all these Black folks who were so cool, with hip-hop culture and street style and cowboys – which I loved since I was a kid – all merged together,” he says. “I felt I belonged. It’s changed my life. Finding this subject matter and getting obsessed with it has been the most rewarding artistic journey of my entire life. I’ve made lifelong friendships and it has become part of my identity.”

McClellan’s obsession has taken him to events across the US, from Nevada to Tennessee. His photos have been collected in his new book Eight Seconds: Black Cowboy Culture, named after the time a bull rider must stay mounted on a bucking bull to achieve a qualified ride. Not everyone is happy for the white cowboy archetype to be disrupted, however. “I got a mysterious phone call the other day where somebody said: ‘Hey, is this the monkey rodeo? I want to open a crack booth,’” McClennan says. “There’s a simmering hatred that I have to just ignore, because for as many people who are offended by talking about Black cowboys and Black rodeo, there are 10 times as many who are thrilled.”

As Charles Sampson, the first African American cowboy to win a world championship in professional rodeo, writes in the book’s introduction, the history of Black cowboys has been “all but forgotten. Legendary western figures such as Bass Reeves, Bill Pickett, Stagecoach Mary and Nat Love have been left out of films and history books.”

“I think it’s due to laziness and what’s marketable,” McClellan says. “The Hollywood machine is about getting people to the movie theatre. I love westerns. The archetype of the noble white cowboy is one I love. I just want to expand that and say there’s more going on.”

McClennan, 41, started out photographing weddings, fashion and street photography before immersing himself in Black cowboy culture. He divides his time between photography and a full-time job as a designer for Adobe Lightroom photography software.

He has also become a rodeo boss, having organised the first 8 Seconds Juneteenth Rodeo in Portland in 2023, which is set to return this summer. By working on events such as this, he is hoping to encourage support for Black cowboy culture, which he sees dwindling across the country. “It has a very difficult future,” he says. “It’s super-expensive to get into ranching or stock-contracting, and when you have a population of 35,000 people across America who are Black and participate in western culture, it’s really noticeable that you see fewer each year. I feel a sense of urgency. To lose this culture would be a tragedy.”

Eight Seconds: Black Rodeo Culture by Ivan McClellan is published by Damiani (£40).

Another country: five images from Ivan McClellan’s Eight Seconds

Keary Hines, Prairie View, Texas, 2021 (main image, top)
“Hines is a calf-roper. He has struggled, like a lot of Black cowboys, to support his lifestyle and compete at the level he wants to. He’s the definition of cowboy cool with his swagger, the rope around his shoulder, and two horses that he’s completely in control of.”

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Pony Express, Okmulgee, Oklahoma, 2021
“I’m in the arena for this photo, standing on the dirt. These two riders are competing in an event called Pony Express, which is a baton relay race on horseback around the arena,” says McClellan. “I’m too close in this photo, so I’m a little bit nervous. The photo is blurry and technically a mess, but it ended up being the cover of my book, because it’s just got so much energy.”

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Cowboy prayer, Okmulgee, Oklahoma, 2020
“This is a Pony Express team called Southside. The beauty of Okmulgee’s rodeo is that it starts exactly at sundown, so the lighting is just perfect all the time. In this photo, the skies are interesting – the sun has just gone down and there’s a pink haze. The riders are about to go and compete, they’re all on horseback and holding hands to pray for their safety. Pony Express is a dangerous sport so this prayer is really serious for them.”

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Ja’Dayia Kursh, Oklahoma, 2021
“This is a cowgirl called Ja’Dayia Kursh. She’s got a little bit of dirt on her knee, which is the only indication that she just got bucked off a horse. I love her swagger and her energy. I love that she’s still posing like a rodeo queen, even though she just did something completely badass.”

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Dantez and Floss, Okmulgee, Oklahoma, 2020
“Dantez is the man standing and Floss is the one on horseback. They are father and son, and they’re on a Pony Express team called the Country Boyz. I meet them every single year at the rodeo at this exact spot at this exact time. This is where they park, saddle up their horses and get ready for the competition.”

April 04, 2024

Lead ImageReplica Man Magazine, 2022 © Gabriel Moses, Prestel

The Vision & Justice publishing initiative hopes to build a richer, more racially inclusive history of photography.

The upcoming solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 will offer residents of southern Ontario a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to personally witness this “cosmic ballet” (to quote the late Leonard Nimoy from his appearance on “The Simpsons”) in all of its glory. After all, Ontario won’t be in the path of another total solar eclipse until Oct. 26, 2144.

Given the rarity of the spectacle, you might be tempted to capture a few images of this celestial phenomenon on your cellphone’s camera — especially if you happen to be in an area at, or near, totality during the event — but if we know looking directly at the sun is hazardous for our eyes is it safe for your device’s image sensor?

Is it safe to photograph the solar eclipse with my smartphone?

A seemingly simple question, with a seemingly complicated answer. Two of the largest smartphone manufacturers — Apple and Samsung — didn’t answer our questions on this subject and there’s a lot of conflicting information available online. Some sources say snapping a few shots of the eclipse is fine, while others suggest doing so will leave you with a damaged cellphone camera and a “neat” story about how you wrecked your phone’s image sensor trying to photograph the 2024 eclipse.

That said, NASA’s 2024 eclipse website’s FAQ section directs questions regarding the eclipse and smartphone photography to the American Astronomical Society’s page which says that you can take photographs of the eclipse with your cellular device, provided you make use of a solar filter over the lenses to protect them. They also link to some sources selling filters with the kind of protection you should look for.

Speaking of which, if you’re going to be trying to align your phone to take photos of the eclipse as it happens, don’t forget to procure some eye protection for yourself as well. Ideally, you’ll want to snag some ISO 12312-2-certified glasses or viewer(s) to avoid injury.

You can read this article to learn more about how to protect your eyes during the eclipse. According to several sources, including the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, it is only considered “safe” to shed your solar protection during the total eclipse of the sun and only if you are in the path of totality. The eclipse is expected to begin in southern Ontario around 2 p.m., peak at 3:20 or so and will conclude by about 4:30.

Even if you are in the path of totality, some ophthalmologists warn against removing your solar glasses or viewer at all during the event as the total eclipse of the sun can only be measured in seconds or minutes, depending on where you are located, and it can be difficult to tell exactly when you’re safe to remove your eye protection and when you should put it back on to avoid damaging your vision.

Should I photograph the eclipse with my smartphone?

That’s ultimately up to you, but if that’s your plan the first thing you’ll want to do is be realistic with your expectations. Chances are your cellphone’s camera isn’t going to be able to capture an image on par with professional photographers using top-notch equipment.

Even so, Appleinsider.com recently published an article detailing how you can boost your chances of capturing a respectable photo of the eclipse. Their advice is to grab one of the aforementioned solar filters, to protect your device’s camera, use that along with a zoom lens attachment — ideally with 12x to 18x optical capability — and then get your hands on a tripod to ensure maximum stability. Even a slightly shaky hand could ruin what might have been a stellar image.

Once you’ve acquired the recommended gear, you can practise for the main event by taking photos of the sun (using the solar filter) and the moon using various settings to determine what works best with your smartphone and photography app of choice.

Where can I get some more information?

If you’d like to read up more on smartphone photography and the eclipse, check out the sites below:

https://eclipse.aas.org/imaging-video/images-videos

https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-eclipses/eclipse-2024/safety/

https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/smartphone-photography-eclipse

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/24/how-to-take-pictures-eclipse-phone/

https://appleinsider.com/inside/iphone/tips/the-next-solar-eclipse-is-on-april-8—-heres-how-to-photograph-it

When Nancy Panicucci-Roma retired, she developed a passion for wildlife photography. But to advance her skills, she knew she needed help.

So when she moved from upstate Nanuet to Northport to be closer to her daughter, Panicucci-Roma joined the Huntington Camera Club.

Since then, she said she’s learned a lot more about the medium, especially through the club’s competitions and group outings, like a recent photographic jaunt to Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park in Oyster Bay.

“Your work gets critiqued once a month, and you learn from the critiques that people give you, and you start talking to your fellow colleagues and also learn through them,” said Panicucci-Roma, 70, who worked in administration for the state Office of Mental Health.

Whether you’re using a cellphone or a high-end camera, the ability to consistently take decent photos requires learning skills such as “composition, recognition of good light and interesting subject matter,” said Darin Reed, the club’s president.

“Otherwise, you might get a good shot, but you may have just gotten lucky,” he said. “When you can take it from getting lucky to making something special out of something that’s somewhat mundane — that takes some effort, some skills, some training.”

For example, Reed said club members will go over guidelines for producing stronger, more compelling images like the rule of thirds: A photographer uses imaginary lines to divide a photo into thirds, placing the subject off center.

“We, as a club, can help people learn these rules, but we also encourage creative experimentation,” he said, noting most members are amateur photographers, though some work professionally.

The greatest advice he’s ever gotten, he said, was to “learn to see the way my camera sees. Once you understand this, and how to operate your camera, your photography will get a whole lot better.”

As photographers explore the medium, Reed said they tend to focus on specific areas of interest, including landscapes, portraits, wildlife or street photography.

“You eventually develop your own style,” he said.