By Ellen Gilbert

"A flock of girls just arrived at arrived at our house,” Frank McLaughlin told friends on September 22, 1919. While not exactly “a flock,” the new arrivals were a multiple: identical twin girls named Frances and Kathryn. They grew up to be known as Kathryn Abbe and Frances McLaughlin-Gill, and became remarkably successful photographers who published pictures of high fashion models and celebrities like the young Jacqueline Bouvier in the late 1940s and 1950s. They passed away within months of each other in 2014. The McGill sisters were born in Brooklyn as a result of their having arrived two months early and “were snugly wrapped and placed near a warm oven,” according to a later account by Frances. She couldn’t have remembered, of course, and the affluent Connecticut upbringing that immediately followed suggests that the humble modesty of that description may not exactly have been accurate. Photographs of the twins as beautifully outfitted babies, young bathing beauties, visitors to 1939 World’s Fair, and later, as on-location professional photographers, show them to be as glamorous as any of the subjects they depicted over the years."

COLLABORATORS

The collaborative nature of Abbe and McLaughlin-Gill’s 2008 book, Twins on Twins is striking. Using photographs and text, the sisters set out to examine “the eternal fascination of twins.” (The handwritten inscription, “Happy 40th from you pin twister 7-25-81,” in this writer’s second-hand copy of the book, was an added nuance.) The book portrays 30 sets of twins, ages 14 months to 100 years. A few of the photographs, particularly those of older twins made up and wearing precisely the same thing may be, for just a moment, uncomfortably reminiscent of Arbus-land. The almost scholarly nature of the book, which includes additional text by Julie Szekely and research by Victoria B. Bjorklund, is impressive. Historical considerations of twins include sections on “Twins in Mythology” (including Castor and Pollux; Romulus and Remus, and Esau and Jacob), and “Twins in Art.” “The Biology of Twinning” and “Twins in Other Cultures” receive serious treatment in the section on “Twins Now,” and background notes, a bibliography, and resource list enrich the effort. “Because of the unity of our work, we have chosen to share the credit for all the photographs,” they write. “We are twins. Our book is an exploration of being twins. As professional photographers since 1941, we have met many twins—as subjects of photo stories, as co-workers, as friends.” It is interesting to note that this intimacy did not preclude pursuing independent careers.

ON FILM

Abbe and McLaughlin-Gill were memorialized in a 2008 documentary short, Twin Lenses produced by Nina Rosenblum and written by Dennis Watlington. The film, which begins with the sisters, then in their 80s, reminiscing about their careers, is an expansion of work begun by Rosenblum’s mother, Naomi Rosenblum, author of A History of Women Photographers. “These women [Abbe and McLaughlin-Gill] were true pioneers,” observes Watlington [in the film]. “I loved that I got to study these women triumphing over all the obstacles.” Among their earliest hurdles, apparently, was simply getting to be identified as a photographer. Rosenblum reports that “when Cecil Beaton took the Vogue magazine photograph of the magazine’s current photographers he left her [Frances] out because she was a woman.” “When Frances McLaughlin-Gill became the first to sign a contract with Vogue in 1943 not only did she exemplify the young American woman the magazine was increasingly speaking to, but her work broke with the stilted formality that was the convention of the time,” writes Vogue Archive Editor Laird Borrelli-Persson in a 2014 remembrance of McLaughlin-Gill. “Everyone was wearing beautiful clothes, sitting in an elegant chair, or leaning against a pillar, looking into the camera,” McLaughin-Gill said in a 1996 interview. “In contrast,” writes Borrelli-Peersson, “McLaughin-Gill’s work was more relaxed and infused with an all-American optimism.” Abbe, a free-lance photographer at the time, had McCalls, Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, and Paris Match as clients.

PASSIONATE ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY

Success came early: both sisters were finalists in Vogue’s Prix de Paris talent contest in 1941, the same year they graduated from Pratt Institute. At Pratt they began by studying art; partway through they became consumed by photography and, as McLaughlin-Gill says in Twin Lenses, “that was that. We were very fortunate; we knew what we wanted to do.”

Having fun was definitely part of the plan. “Friends were always introducing us to men twins,” they recount in Twins on Twins. “We dated John and Bob Lawson, Yale ’40, and caused riotous confusion when we four appeared at the Yale Prom that year.” They gave up dressing alike when they moved on to Condé Nast. When they settled down, both married noted photographers: James Abbe, Jr. and Leslie Gill. Years later, though, they were still able to create confusion. “Often there were twin mix-ups such as the time a stranger threw his arms around Kathryn in Paris,” they recalled. “It was a shocker whenever it happened. Often the person refused to believe that a twin existed.” Family ties notwithstanding, the twins were known for their own rigorous work ethic throughout their careers. Their cousin, the award-winning children’s book writer and illustrator Tomie dePaola (Strega Nona) recalled being mentored by them; they “gave me the advice of a lifetime when I was just a very young artist-want-to-be: ‘Don’t copy, and practice, practice, practice.’” And work hard: in Twin Lenses one of them can be heard describing the “hard, intense, concentration” required to create successful photographs. “After a couple of hours I feel like I’ve played tennis and then I’m hungry,” she adds. Rosenblum came away from making her film with similar impressions about the twins’ industriousness. “I learned so much from watching [the twins] in action...about the focus that it takes...about making an essence, bringing something down to its essential qualities, the thought process and the visual process.” “The twins broke through the glass ceiling with their cameras...at a time when few women worked as professional photographers,” observes writer Sheila Cosgrove Baylis in a review of Twin Lenses, which she described as “a beautiful and responsible contribution to art history.” Also noteworthy is the film’s depiction of the ways in which both McLaughlin-Gill and Abbe skillfully balanced work with a commitment to family and raising children.

STAYING CLOSE

Although their paths diverged after they were married, their commitment to each other remained. The Abbes moved their four children, a dog and a cat to a Long Island farmhouse. McLaughlin-Gill remained in New York City working for Vogue and Glamour. Leslie Gill’s sudden death in 1958 drew the families closer, as is movingly documented in family photographs taken by James Abbe that summer. While they “continued their separate careers,” reported Frances, they shared “children and leisure hours whenever we could. She often arranged country locations for my photographs, and I provided studio facilities in New York when she needed them.” Abbe’s “all-time favorite assignment” occurred when Good Housekeeping asked her to be the exclusive photographer of the Keinast quintuplets when they were born in 1970. “Documenting them year after year led us to many new thoughts about ourselves as twins,” she reported. “These insights and the discovery of the real pleasure of working together on projects led us to the idea of doing Twins on Twins.” “Traditionally,” the sisters wrote, “twins in literature have been used to portray opposites: good vs. evil, light vs. dark, mortal vs. immortal.... Most books about twins treat them as subjects of medical studies. We question that assumption.” New and used copies of Twins on Twins, which was originally published by Clarkson N. Potter, are available online. For more information on Twin Lenses, visit www.rosenblumphoto.org/shop/twin-lenses-dvd.