Customer Reviews

George Platt Lynes

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The very first line of this book warns the reader that David Leddick is no scholar. He states that Lynes was one of the most famous photographers in America by the mid-century. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lynes's career began to falter in the 1940's and by 1950 he was pretty much unknown outside a small New York gay and fashion circle. Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, W. Eugene Smith, Horst P. Horst, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen and even Lynes's friend Cecil Beaton were the most famous photographers in America at that time, many were household names. Lynes was never anywhere near their level of celebrity in his lifetime. More of a problem is the author's uninspired photo selection which is missing some of Lynes's great masterpieces. It seems as though the author simply compressed Jack Woody's three great books on Lynes (published by Twelve Trees Press) into one, but without Woody's fastidious eye. A big book but no one is home!

"As a photographer George Platt Lynes was a brilliant craftsman and master of composition, whether it be in one of his many portraits of the famous and the legendary, or in his stunningly vivid documentations of the New York City Ballet. But Platt Lynes was also a myth-maker with a photographic obsession that remained mostly unpublished until after his death. In collaboration with his male nude models he was able to transcend time and place - these images simultaniously glance back as a "homage" to Greek mythology and athleticism, and look forward to the modern, urban eroticism of Robert Mapplethorpe and Bruce Weber. This book breaks down his body of work into distinct sections. The portraits include such luminaries of twentieth century art and society as Thomas Mann, Igor Stravinsky and Gertrude Stein, as well as fellow lens-men Cecil Beaton and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and it is clear from the lighting and the often surreal framing that he was a master of the form. It is in his extensive nude images that his admiration for the male body and his expert technique are truly brought together." - text from Intermale

Over the years I have collected everything I can about George Platt Lynes career as a photographer. As a true admirer of his wonderful black & white photography I feel this is a wonderful new addition published by Taschen. It's a beautiful over-sized book with over 240 pages of beautifully reproduced photos of his many different images. The book is broken down into five sections; Portraits, Ballet, Nudes, Fashion and Mythology. I especially enjoyed his ballet photos, fashion and nude images. Each section has a detailed history of each photography subject.

It's a great history of his career. There is a detailed biography by David Leddick that is excellent. It's very informative and helpful if you are not familiar with Lynes work, or if you are just refreshing your knowledge of this man's great photography from the 30's & 40's. There was a certain innocent and raw beauty in photography back then that makes these images of his very classic. Lynes use of shadows and light make his models come right at you, in such stark realistic fashion.

This book would make a great gift, or a great addition to your collection, or coffee-table. A real visual experience from one of the best!

Despite the eye-catching photo on the cover, this book has more than stunning male nudes. The book is divided into sections, including magnificent Portraits of well-known people in the arts (Cecil Beaton, e.e. cummings -- it's a fun, eclectic selection), Ballet photography, Nudes (both sexes, but mostly male), and Fashion. All the photographs are black & white, and every single one is well worth extended viewing. Lynes manages to make every subject beautiful and fascinating; each pose pulls you in, and his use of lighting is extraordinary. There are also helpful essays at the start of each section, which put the work in the context of the artist's life. It's a perfect introduction to this great photographer; a wonderful book to own, or to give.

George Platt Lynes has to be one of the most influential of Twentieth Century American photographers. This beautifully printed book by David Leddick illustrates that. In his narrative, Mr. Leddick says that both Bruce Webber and Herb Ritts were influenced by Lynes. I would add Arnold Newman-- his environmental portraits recall those of Lynes--Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jack Shear and Arthur Tress, just to name a few. Mr. Leddick divides the photographs in five categories: portraits, ballet, nudes, fashion and mythology. The very first photograph in the series of portraits is one of Lynes' first ever, a stunning portrait of Gertrude Stein, proof that one can learn apertures and lighting but that genius is by birth.

Certainly Mr. Leddick's commentary is adequate; but if you want to really enjoy this book, just look at these photos. Certainly no one was better at lighting a face or body than Mr. Lynes. And he did his work before the advent of the strobe lights, something that seems to make a lot of later photographers lazy.

A word about the photographer's nudes. Some of these models, both male and female, had less than perfect bodies. They are lit beautifully, however, and prove the theory that lighting can make most anyone beautiful, and if not beautiful in the case of portraits, at least interesting. If you are tired of looking at book after book filled with color photographs of endless buffed bodies that look like all the other buffed bodies and about as interesting as passport photographs, spend some time with these incredible works of art. You'll be glad you did.

Lynes' photography is truly amazing! I will never tire of their nuanced beauty, and really love this collection of his best work.

thank god for david leddick!

he is one of the few people that knows the work of lynes and respects it. there is so much to respect.

lynes, with only a sense of what he liked to guide him, shot some incredible portraits of the famous in his day, beautiful portraits of the first dancers of new york city ballet and fashion portraits that were quite stylish.

then, came his nudes. this man loved men. and he knew how to put that love over on film. and he loved them all. dancers, bodybuilders, schmendricks off the street with dirty fingernails. he found something beautiful in tham and captured it in a way that is still arresting. and so difficult to believe the images are 50, 60, 70 years old.

but what is more difficult to believe is that lynes didn't want anyone to see them. well, this is where leddick comes in, and once again, i am a happy person. this collection is beautifully edited and has the added appeal of lynes' self-portraits. my favorite--the one he shot of himself in a dance costume.

George Platt Lynes' best work is visceral. His classically beautiful nudes, ballet photographs, and self-portraits are heroic. They are liminal and luminous. They are self-explanatory but available for projection and interpretation. They often demand our longing.

His portrait of Carlos McLendon (p. 148), for instance, is a vision of heaven. McLendon sits on an old bed, leaning his back against a wall. An angle of light, falling onto the wall against which he leans, reveals the curve of his hipbone, the gorgeous slimness of his waist. The light reveals legs that are slim but muscular; it shines on one of his beautifully toned arms. His hair is blond, his face full and youthful. His face, part of his chest, his lower legs and his feet are in shadow. He is divided between shadow and light, as is the wall behind him. He leans on shadowed elbow, his legs folded closely together. His pose suggests softness, seduction. It is difficult to tell whether he is looking past us or at us. He could be Narcissus.

Platt Lynes' self-portraits explore personas and can have a similarly erotic, longing-inducing effect. The back cover shows him a Marlboro man, the kind of guy a smoking fetishist dreams about. In the photo, he's smoking a cigarette, his fingers holding near his lips. There are winkles on his face, particularly on his forehead. He is lean and muscular. The sinewy lines of his hair-covered arms, revealed by the tightly rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt, make him unrepentantly, stereotypically masculine. The fluidity of youthful beauty, so clearly once possessed by Platt Lynes, is gone, turned into something hard, into something more and less vulnerable. His eyes are dark. There are similarities between the look in his eyes and the look in McLendon's. The older man is as erotic as his younger counterpart. His experience has perhaps taught him--mercilessly--about what he wants.

His portrait of himself in Harlequin costume (p. 76) shifts from the Marlboro-man image, returning us to youth. Like the portrait of McLendon, this portrait makes a philosophical point of dividing its subject's body between black and white. In it, Platt Lynes stands against a black background, dressed in tight-fitting Harlequin costume, looking upward into an overhead light. One leg is covered in black fabric, the other in white. His arms are held out to his side and rounded, so that his fingers touch his upper thighs. The light hitting his eyes makes them look like the eyes of a classical Greek or Roman statue. The light highlights his blond-white hair and his white skin. He looks upward, one of Michelangelo's emerging figures, emerged.

Much like his nudes and self-portraits, his ballet photographs examine persona, costume, heroism. They can be oblique: sometimes they study dance by looking at dancers' bodies; sometimes they study theater by looking at costumes. As in many of his other pictures, subjects are often divided by black and white lighting. In his portrait of Yvonne Mounsey (p. 97), the black and white lighting makes palpable the textures of her costume. Her pose complements the sexually charged illustration that she wears. The picture is as full of textures as is his Marlboro man self-portrait. His portraits of Igor Youskevitch (p. 93) and Erik Bruhn (p. 98) are pensive, softened versions of his portrait of himself as Harlequin. They are as capable as he of challenging Deity, but too sad or too thoughtful to want to do so.

Platt Lynes repeatedly uses simple backgrounds. These simple backgrounds emphasize the effects of lighting, bring to the fore costumes and subjects. As a result, effects are direct, contoured and nuanced but undiluted. Platt Lynes does not spare us desire or inspiration.

I recently purchased this book simply because I had seen a few plates of the photographer's work in other collections, and own several other titles by this publisher, Taschen. Now that I own it, I'm very pleased with this addition to my collection. It's a substantial collection covering everything from homoerotic male nudes to Orson Wells. As a collector of books on art and photography, I'm used to measuring work by a pretty stringent standard and this edition meets it. Good prints, standard historical references and backgrounds, also works well as a research tool. I highly recommend this book. This book will escalate in value over time, the Amazon cost is a good value.