Photographer Frances McLaughlin – Gill

Female fashion photographers are as much a rarity today as they were when Frances McLaughlin-Gill became the first to sign a contract with Vogue, in 1943. Then 24, 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. “Everyone was wearing beautiful clothes, sitting in an elegant chair, or leaning against a pillar, looking into the camera,” McLaughin-Gill explained in a 1996 interview. In contrast, McLaughin-Gill’s work was more relaxed and infused with an all-American optimism.McLaughlin-Gill, who died on October 23 at the age of 95, was born in Brooklyn and raised in Connecticut with her identical twin, Kathryn Abbe, also a photographer. Both sisters were finalists in Vogue’s Prix de Paris talent contest in 1941, the same year they graduated from Pratt Institute. McLaughlin-Gill’s career was launched by her mentor, photographer Toni Frissell, who introduced her to Vogue’s art director, Alexander Liberman. Liberman was “immediately taken with Franny’s youthful irreverence, directness, and spontaneity,” says Condé Nast archive director Shawn Waldron. Here, a selection of photographs by McLaughlin-Gill from the Vogue archive, in celebration of the pioneering American talent.(Source VOGUE)