George Platt Lynes

George Platt Lynes (April 15, 1907 – December 6, 1955) was an American fashion and commercial photographer who was popular in the 1930s and 1940s.^[1] Today, he is best known for his photography featuring many gay artists and writers from the 1940s that were acquired by the Kinsey Institute after his death in 1955.^[2]

Early life

Born in East Orange, New Jersey to Adelaide Sparkman and Joseph Russell Lynes (died 1932).^[1][3] His younger brother was Joseph Russell Lynes, Jr. (1910–1991). Lynes spent his childhood in New Jersey but attended the Berkshire School in Massachusetts, where he was a classmate of Lincoln Kirstein (1907–1996). He was sent to Paris in 1925 with the idea of better preparing him for college. His life was forever changed by the circle of friends that he would meet there including Gertrude Stein, Glenway Wescott, Monroe Wheeler. He attended Yale University in 1926, but dropped out after a year to move to New York City.^[4]

Career

He returned to the United States with the idea of a literary career and he even opened a bookstore in Englewood, New Jersey in 1927. He first became interested in photography not with the idea of a career, but to take photographs of his friends and display them in his bookstore.

Returning to France the next year in the company of Wescott and Wheeler, he traveled around Europe for the next several years, always with his camera at hand. He developed close friendships within a larger circle of artists including Jean Cocteau and Julien Levy, the art dealer and critic. Levy would exhibit his photographs in his gallery in New York City in 1932 and Lynes would open his studio there that same year.

Commercial work

He was soon receiving commissions from Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country, and Vogue^[1] including a cover with perhaps the first supermodel, Lisa Fonssagrives. In 1935, he was asked to document the principal dancers and productions of Kirstein's and George Balanchine's newly founded American Ballet company (now the New York City Ballet).^[2][5]

While he continued to shoot fashion photographs, getting accounts with such major clients as Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue during the 1930s and 1940s, he was losing interest and had started a series of photographs which interpreted characters and stories from Greek mythology.

Photograph of Marianne Moore taken by Lynes in 1935.

By 1946, he grew disillusioned with New York and left for Hollywood, where he became chief photographer for the Vogue studios. He photographed Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Gloria Swanson and Orson Welles, from the film industry, as well as others in the arts among them Aldous Huxley, Igor Stravinsky, and Thomas Mann. While a success artistically, it was a financial failure.

His friends helped him to move back to New York City in 1948. Other photographers, such as Richard Avedon, Edgar de Evia and Irving Penn, had taken his place in the fashion world. This combined with his disinterest in commercial work, meant he was never able to regain the successes he once had.

Private collection

He was also most notably friends with Katherine Anne Porter,^[5] author of the novel Ship of Fools, with whom he often enjoyed photographing wearing elaborate evening gowns and occasionally reenacting Shakespeare.^[6]

During his lifetime, Lynes amassed a substantial body of work involving nude and homoerotic photography. In the 1930s, he began taking nudes of friends, performers and models, including a young Yul Brynner, although these remained private, unknown and unpublished for years.^[2] Over the following two decades, Lynes continued his work in this area passionately, albeit privately. "The depth and commitment he had in photographing the male nude, from the start of his career to the end, was astonishing. There was absolutely no commercial impulse involved — he couldn't exhibit it, he couldn't publish it." - Allen Ellenzweig, art and photography critic who wrote the introduction to George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes, published in 2011 by Rizzoli.^[7]

In the late 1940s, Lynes became acquainted with Dr. Alfred Kinsey and his Institute in Bloomington, Indiana.^[7] Kinsey took an interest in Lynes work, as he was researching homosexuality in America at the time.^[2] A large number of Lynes' nude and homoerotic works were left to the Kinsey Institute after his death in 1955.^[4] The body of work residing at the Kinsey Institute remained largely unknown until it was made public and published later.^[8] The Kinsey collection represents one of the largest single collections of Lynes's work.^[7]

Personal life

For over ten years, Lynes had a love affair with both Monroe Wheeler, the curator, and Glenway Wescott (1901–1987), the writer.^[8] He later got together with his studio assistant and, after he died in World War II, Lynes moved in with the younger brother of the assistant.^[8]

Death

By May 1955, Lynes had been diagnosed terminally ill with lung cancer. He closed his studio and was reported to have destroyed much of his print and negative archives, particularly his male nudes. However, it is now known that he had transferred many of these works to the Kinsey Institute. "He clearly was concerned that this work, which he considered his greatest achievement as a photographer, should not be dispersed or destroyed...We have to remember the time period we're talking about—America during the post-war Red Scare..."^[7]

After a final trip to Europe, Lynes returned to New York City, where he died in 1955, while living with his brother and brother's family.^[1]

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions

Collections

References

Notes

References

• James Crump (1993). George Platt Lynes: Photographs from the Kinsey Institute. Bulfinch Press/Little Brown & Company. ISBN 978-0-8212-1996-6.
• James Crump and Anatole Pohorilenko (1998). When we were three: The travel albums of George Platt Lynes, Monroe Wheeler, and Glenway Wescott, 1925-1935. Arena Editions. ISBN 0965728048.
• Leddick, David (2000). George Platt Lynes. New York: Taschen. ISBN 978-3-8228-6403-6. 
• Leddick, David (2000). Intimate Companions: a Triography of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Lincoln Kirstein, and Their Circle. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-27127-5. 
• Woody, Jack (1994). Portrait: The Photographs of George Platt Lynes, 1927-1955. Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishers. 
• Lynes, George Platt (2011). George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes. New York: Rizzoli International Publications. ISBN 978-0-8478-3374-0. 

External links

• Queer Arts Biopic
• George Platt Lynes at Find a Grave