Designed and printed like a novel, Two Of Us reproduces a vast archive of images taken by a street photographer working in San Francisco from the 1940s through the 1970s. Each photograph shows a couple–friends, lovers, and business associates of all ages–walking hand in hand, arm in arm, and shoulder to shoulder.


Interested in the concept of the double described by Baudelaire, Benjamin, and Freud, Elisabeth Tonnard constructs a visual narrative where the photographic double (the reflection of a live subject) exists as a repeating gesture without motion. The images are combined with a poem by Baudelaire that is broken into separate words, set, and rotated below each photograph. Flipping the book’s pages causes the words to revolve, as the poem reads sequentially from front-to-back.