Research Catalog

George Platt Lynes the daring eye

Title
George Platt Lynes [electronic resource] : the daring eye / by Allen Ellenzweig.
Author
Ellenzweig, Allen
Publication
New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021]

Available Online

  • Available from home with a valid library card
  • Available onsite at NYPL

Details

Description
1 online resource (xx, 639 pages) : illustrations.
Summary
"This is a biography of George Platt Lynes (1907-1955), the gregarious American portrait, dance, fashion, and male nude photographer whose career spanned the late 1920s to his early death. From age 18, Lynes entered the cosmopolitan world of the American expatriate community in Paris when he became acquainted with the salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Intending to pursue a writing and small press publishing career, Lynes also began photographing authors like Stein, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Colette. Soon, he turned exclusively to photography, establishing himself as one of the premier fashion photographers in the Condé Nast stable, documenting the ballet companies of George Balanchine/Lincoln Kirstein, and pursuing a private obsession with seductive images of young male nudes rarely published in his lifetime. Lynes's private life was as glamourous and theatrical as his images with their brilliant studio lighting and dramatic Surrealist set-ups. Barely out of his teens, he met publisher Monroe Wheeler who was already in a relationship with emerging expatriate novelist Glenway Wescott. The peripatetic threesome maintained a polyamorous connection that lasted some 15 years. Their New York apartment became a mecca for elegant name-dropping dinner parties. Their ménage-a-trois complicates our understanding of the pre-Stonewall gay "closet." This biography, drawing upon intimate letters and an unpublished memoir of Lynes's life by his brother, writer and editor Russell Lynes, paints a portrait of the emerging influence of gays and lesbians across cultural genres that defined transatlantic cosmopolitan culture and presaged later gay political consciousness"--
Uniform Title
George Platt Lynes (Online)
Alternative Title
George Platt Lynes (Online)
Subject
  • Lynes, George Platt, 1907-1955
  • Photographers > United States > Biography
  • Gay photographers > United States > Biography
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access (note)
  • Access restricted to authorized users.
LCCN
2021031359
OCLC
ssj0002704153
Author
Ellenzweig, Allen.
Title
George Platt Lynes [electronic resource] : the daring eye / by Allen Ellenzweig.
Imprint
New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021]
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access
Access restricted to authorized users.
Connect to:
Available from home with a valid library card
Available onsite at NYPL
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