George Platt Lynes
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self portrait of George Platt Lynes |
George Platt Lynes (
15 April 1907 –
6 December 1955) was an
American fashion and
commercial photographer.
Born in
East Orange, New Jersey to Adelaide (Sparkman) and Joseph Russell Lynes his childhood was spent in
New Jersey but he attended the
Berkshire School in
Massachusetts. 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.
Gertrude Stein,
Glenway Wescott,
Monroe Wheeler and those that he met through them opened an entirely new world to the young artist.
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 displayed them in his bookstore.
Returning to
France the next year in the company of Wescott and Wheeler, they would travel around Europe for the next several years, always with his camera at hand. He developed close friendships with 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. He was soon receiving commissions from
Harper's Bazaar,
Town & Country and
Vogue including a cover with perhaps the first
supermodel,
Lisa Fonssagrives.
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self portrait of George Platt Lynes |
In
1935 he was asked to document the principal dancers and productions of
Lincoln Kirstein's and
George Balanchine's newly founded
American Ballet company (now the
New York City Ballet).
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.
By the mid-1940s grew disillusioned with New York and left for Hollywood in
1946 where he took the post of 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 he 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.
Focus on homoerotic imagery, started to take over his life. He had begun in the
1930s taking nudes of his circle of friends and performers, including a young
Yul Brynner, but these had been known only to intimates for years. He began working with Dr.
Alfred Kinsey and his
Institute in
Bloomington, Indiana. The
Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, as it is known today holds the largest collection of his male nudes. Twice he declared bankruptcy.
By May of 1955 he had been diagnosed terminally ill with lung cancer. He closed his studio. He destroyed much of his print and negative archives particularly his
male nudes. After a final trip to Europe, Lynes returned to New York City where he died.
Crump, James. George Platt Lynes: Photographs from the Kinsey Institute. Boston: Bullfinch Press, 1993.
Leddick, David. George Platt Lynes. New York: Taschen, 2000.
Leddick, David. Intimate Companions: a Triography of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Lincoln Kirstein, and Their Circle. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.
Woody, Jack. Portrait: The Photographs of George Platt Lynes, 1927-1955. Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishers, 1994.
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George Lynes page
