George Platt Lynes collection

George Platt Lynes was born April 15, 1907 in East Orange, New Jersey. After graduation from the Berkshire School in Massachusetts, he was sent to Paris to prepare for college. There he met Gertrude Stein, Glenway Wescott, Monroe Wheeler, and others who had a profound influence on him. He began his career as a photographer taking portraits of his friends. In 1932, the art dealer Julien Levy exhibited his work and soon Lynes closed the bookstore he had run since 1927 to open his own studio. Having moved to commercial work for fashion magazines, Lynes was engaged in 1935 to photograph principal dancers of the American Ballet (now New York City Ballet). He eventually moved to Hollywood where he became chief photographer for the Vogue studios, photographing celebrities of every kind. By 1948, financial difficulties led Lynes back to New York. Here he left commercial work entirely and focused on male nudes, a subject he had pursued from his earliest years as a photographer. Lynes continued to struggle financially and twice declared bankruptcy. In early 1955, he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, after which he closed his studio and destroyed many of his prints and negatives. He was careful, however, to donate some of his nudes to the Kinsey Institute, which now holds one of the largest collections of Lynes’s work. After a final trip to Europe, Lynes died on December 6, 1955.