George Platt Lynes

George Platt Lynes was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1907. He spent his childhood in New Jersey but went to the Berkshire School in Massachusetts. HIs parents sent him to Paris in 1925 to get him prepared for University. His life changes as he becomes friends with numerous artists of the time, such as Gertrude Stein. He goes back to the United States and wants to become a writer, but becomes passionate about photography.

George Platt Lynes was a brilliant craftsman a master of composition, whether in his portraits of famous people such as Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky and Gertrude Stein, or his stunningly vivid documentation of the New York City Ballet.

This skill and passion for his subjects made him enormously successful in the 30s and 40s, when he featured in all the leading fashion magazines of the day - Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and others. But Platt Lynes was also a myth-maker, with a photographic obsession that sadly remained unpublicised until after his death. Working with his male nude models, he was able to transcend time and place, simultaneously glancing back to Greek mythology and athleticism, and looking forward to the modern, urban eroticism of Robert Mapplethorpe and Bruce Weber.