cover image The Luminous Years: Portraits at Mid-Century

The Luminous Years: Portraits at Mid-Century

Karl Bissinger. ABRAMS, $40 (144pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-4602-6

This intimate portrait collection captures post-WWII celebrities and bohemians--including Truman Capote, Marlon Brando, Katharine Hepburn, James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal, among many others--during what Vidal calls""our brief golden age."" Shot primarily in New York City during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the era's luminaries strike a pose in their various apartments, studios and local haunts: Katharine Hepburn lifts her head in the gleaming sunshine of her New York townhouse garden; Henry Miller cooly lights a cigarette with his feet propped up on his desk in Big Sur; and Jean Cocteau glowers from the Paris set of Les Parents terribles. These mid-century snapshots include photographs never before published or not seen in the 40 years since Bissinger retired into obscurity in the late 1950s. 125 illustrations in tritone.