George Platt Lynes Photograph

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George Platt Lynes was lauded as one the world’s top commercial photographers in the first half of the 20th century, known for his portraits of important cultural figures, surreal fashion shoots and innovative use of lighting and evocative sets. However, in an era when homosexuality was considered a crime, Lynes had to keep secret his best work: erotic nude photographs of men.

Born in 1907 in New Jersey, Lynes attended the Berkshire School in Sheffield, Massachusetts, graduating in 1925. In his youth, Lynes had dreamed of becoming a writer. He published a literary journal and opened a bookstore, both of which were unsuccessful. When he inherited a trove of photographic equipment from a friend, Lynes turned his focus toward a career in photography.

Self-taught, Lynes proved to be a gifted talent behind the camera. His preternatural understanding of the interplay between light, shadow and form garnered critical acclaim. In 1932, Lynes had his first solo exhibition, at Leggett Gallery, followed by a two-artist show with photographer Walker Evans at Julien Levy Gallery. By 1933, Lynes became a central figure in New York photography, whose stylized technique was sought by magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country and Vogue. 

In 1935, the American Ballet Company (now the New York City Ballet) commissioned Lynes to photograph their principal dancers and performances, leading to Lynes’s appointment as the company’s primary photographer for the next 20 years. 

While Lynes enjoyed immense success as a fashion and commercial photographer from the 1930s to the 1950s, he was secretly photographing male nudes — a subject considered highly taboo at the time. Fearing criminal reprisal, Lynes hid the photos and his sexual orientation from the public, sharing his work with a few select friends. Among them was Dr. Alfred Kinsey, founder of the Kinsey Institute, who, in the late 1940s, was researching human sexuality. Enthralled by Lynes’s figurative, black and white photos of the male form, Kinsey purchased more than 600 prints and several hundred negatives at the risk of prosecution.

After he was diagnosed with lung cancer, in 1955, Lynes destroyed many of his negatives and prints. However, he entrusted a sizeable volume of his male nudes to the Kinsey Institute, which today holds the largest collection of Lynes’s works, second only to the Lynes estate. In 2019, an exhibition of images culled from the Kinsey collection, “Sensual/Sexual/Social: The Photography of George Platt Lynes,” was held at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. 

Long after his death, Lynes’s legacy has shaped the evolution of sexual and gender norms. His works are highly sought by galleries and collectors of modern and contemporary photography.

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The first permanent image created by a camera — which materialized during the 1820s — is attributed to Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The French inventor was on to something for sure. Kodak introduced roll film in the 1880s, allowing photography to become more democratic, although cameras wouldn’t be universally accessible until several decades later. 

Digital photographic techniques, software, smartphone cameras and social-networking platforms such as Instagram have made it even easier in the modern era for budding photographers to capture the world around them as well as disseminate their images far and wide. 

What might leading figures of visual art such as Andy Warhol have done with these tools at their disposal?

Today, when we aren’t looking at the digital photos that inundate us on our phones, we look to the past to celebrate the photographers who have broken rules as well as records — provocative and prolific artists like Horst P. Horst, Lillian Bassman and Helmut Newton, who altered the face of fashion and portrait photography; visionary documentary photographers such as Gordon Parks, whose best-known work was guided by social justice; and pioneers of street photography such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who shot for revolutionary travel magazines like Holiday with the likes of globetrotting society lensman Slim Aarons.

Find photographers you may not know in Introspective and The Study — where you’ll read about Berenice Abbott, who positioned herself atop skyscrapers for the perfect shot, or “conceptual artist-adventurer” Charles Lindsay, whose work combines scientific rigor with artistic expression, or Massimo Listri, known for his epic interiors of opulent Old World libraries. Photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron was given a Kodak camera as a child. Later, she shot on Polaroid film before buying her first 35mm camera in her teens. Barron's stunning portraits of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Warhol and other artists chronicle a crucial chapter of New York’s cultural history.

Throughout the past two centuries, photographers have used their medium to create expressive work that has resonated for generations. Shop a voluminous collection of this powerful fine photography on 1stDibs. Search by photographer to find the perfect piece for your living room wall, or spend some time with the work organized under various categories, such as landscape photography, nude photography and more.