The Luminous Years

Portraits at Mid-Century

de Gore Vidal

"These photographs capture those lost, luminous years of artistic and literary life, particularly in New York, but also in London, Paris, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. Taken together they offer a collective portrait of a cultural milieu the likes of which will not be seen again. The subjects of Karl Bissinger's photographs include the writers Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Colette, Henry Miller, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, James Baldwin, and Paul Bowles; musicians Hoagy Carmichael and Isaac Stern; performers Mistinguett, Carol Channing, and Beatrice Lillie; film directors David Lean, John Ford, Jean Renoir, Jean Cocteau, and Joseph von Sternberg; actors Anna Magnani, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Katherine Hepburn, Alec Guiness, Gary Cooper, Tallulah Bankhead, Lotte Lenya, and Jean Marais; choreographers Gower Champion and Agnes de Mille; dancers Manolo Vargas and Jose Greco; singers Jennie Tourel and Juliette Greco; journalists Janet Flanner, Brendan Gill, and Walter Lippmann; artists Saul Steinberg, Raphael Soyer, and Rufino Tamayo; and a host of others." "The Luminous Years offers not only a compelling glimpse of a fleeting golden era, but also the rediscovery of an extraordinary photographic career, however brief. Many of the photographs reproduced here have not been published before and virtually all have not been seen in over fifty years."--Jacket.