The Luminous Years : Portraits at Mid-Century

Karl Bissinger dropped out of the world of photography some time in the late 1950s, but before then he spent ten years photographing the luminaries of cafe society and haute bohemia in New York, Paris and London.

These photographs capture a lost, golden era of the cultural life.

The subjects include Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Gore Vidal, Christopher Isherwood and Katharine Hepburn.

From the cafe scene in France he photographed Jean Renoir, Jean Cocteau, Colette and Jean Marais, and English luminaries include Aldous Huxley, Rex Harrison, Alec Guinness and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.