Author Description

George Platt Lynes was truly a photographer ahead of his time. His striking images, many of which celebrate the beauty of the human form, are startlingly modern when viewed from a late-twentieth-century vantage point. His influence on many of today's most heralded photographers is unequivocal and profound; his love for glamour, tireless interest in modern culture, and experimental nature infiltrated his photographs and shaped his very life. In the 1930s and 1940s, Lynes was widely known for his fashion photographs - luminous and elegant images that defined haute couture. He was also an accomplished dance photographer and portraitist, but his soul was in his fine art photography and, in particular, the resonant figure studies of male nudes - many with erotic overtones - deemed too scandalous for revelation during his lifetime. This landmark monograph brings to light a large body of Lynes's unpublished work and features eighty dramatic images representing all the genres he worked in. It gives particular attention to the male nudes that many feel to be Lynes's finest work. The photographs are drawn from an archive of six hundred prints collected by Lynes's friend and patron Alfred Kinsey, founder of the world-famous Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction which today houses his collection. Bruce Weber's intimate introduction and two insightful, provocative essays by James Crump provide a framework for viewing and interpreting Lynes's forceful images. This elegant book provides a new perspective on a fascinating man, his innovative work, and his timeless and integral contribution to photography.