Vintage Men

A Blog for those of us who love Vintage Pictures of Men.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

George Platt Lynes

  



George Platt Lynes (April 15, 1907 – December 6, 1955) was an American fashion and commercial photographer. Born in East Orange, New Jersey to Adelaide (Sparkman) and Joseph Russell Lynes he spent his childhood in New Jersey but attended the Berkshire School in Massachusetts. He was sent to Paris in 1925 with the idea of better preparing him for college.
His life was forever changed by the circle of friends that he would meet there. Gertrude Stein, Glenway Wescott, Monroe Wheeler and those that he met through them opened an entirely new world to the young artist.
Gertrude Stein, Glenway Wescott Glenway Wescott
Monroe Wheeler Monroe Wheeler
He returned to the United States with the idea of a literary career and he even opened a bookstore in Englewood, New Jersey in 1927. He first became interested in photography not with the idea of a career, but to take photographs of his friends and display them in his bookstore.
Returning to France the next year in the company of Wescott and Wheeler, he traveled around Europe for the next several years, always with his camera at hand. He developed close friendships within a larger circle of artists including Jean Cocteau and Julien Levy, the art dealer and critic. Levy would exhibit his photographs in his gallery in New York City in 1932 and Lynes would open his studio there that same year. He was soon receiving commissions from Harper's Bazaar, Town & Country, and Vogue including a cover with perhaps the first supermodel, Lisa Fonssagrives.
In 1935 he was asked to document the principal dancers and productions of Lincoln Kirstein's and George Balanchine's newly founded American Ballet company (now the New York City Ballet).
Lincoln Kirstein
George Balanchine
While he continued to shoot fashion photographs, getting accounts with such major clients as Bergdorf Goodman,and Saks Fifth Avenue during the 1930s and 1940s he was losing interest and had started a series of photographs which interpreted characters and stories from Greek mythology.
By 1946, he grew disillusioned with New York and left for Hollywood, where he became chief photographer for the Vogue studios. He photographed Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Gloria Swanson and Orson Welles, from the film industry, as well as others in the arts among them Aldous Huxley, Igor Stravinsky, and Thomas Mann. While a success artistically, it was a financial failure. His friends helped him to move back to New York City in 1948. Other photographers, such as Richard Avedon, Edgar de Evia and Irving Penn, had taken his place in the fashion world. This combined with his disinterest in commercial work, meant he was never able to regain the successes he once had. He was also most notably friends with Katherine Anne Porter, author of the novel Ship of Fools, with whom he often enjoyed photographing wearing elaborate evening gowns and occasionally reenacting Shakespeare
During his lifetime, Lynes amassed a substantial body of work involving nude and homoerotic photography. In the 1930s, he began taking nudes of friends, performers and models, including a young Yul Brynner, although these remained private, unknown and unpublished for years. Over the following two decades, Lynes continued his work in this area passionately, albeit privately. "The depth and commitment he had in photographing the male nude, from the start of his career to the end, was astonishing. There was absolutely no commercial impulse involved — he couldn't exhibit it, he couldn't publish it." - Allen Ellenzweig, art and photography critic who wrote the introduction to George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes, published in 2011 by Rizzoli.In the late 1940s, Lynes became acquainted with Dr. Alfred Kinsey and his Institute in Bloomington, Indiana. Kinsey took an interest in Lynes work, as he was researching homosexuality in America at the time.
By May 1955, Lynes had been diagnosed terminally ill with lung cancer. He closed his studio and destroyed much of his print and negative archives, particularly his male nudes. However, it is now known that he had transferred many of these works to the Kinsey Institute. "He clearly was concerned that this work, which he considered his greatest achievement as a photographer, should not be dispersed or destroyed...We have to remember the time period we're talking about—America during the post-war Red Scare..." The body of work residing at the Kinsey Institute remained largely unknown until it was made public and published in 2011. The Kinsey collection represents one of the largest single collections of Lynes's work.
After a final trip to Europe, Lynes returned to New York City, where he died. He is interred in a substantial stone sarcophagus at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York.

Vincenzo Galdi


Galdi was born in Naples in 1871. He started as a model and pupil of photographer Wilhelm von Plüschow while he worked in Naples, then he moved to Rome with him, and eventually he ran a studio of his own in Roma between 1900 circa and 1907, taking photos of naked people, especially women. He was probably one of Plüschow's lovers

Guglielmo Plüschow


Guglielmo Plüschow (born Wilhelm Plüschow; August 18, 1852 – January 3, 1930), was a German photographer who moved to Italy and became known for his nude photos of local youths, predominantly males. Being the cousin of Wilhelm von Gloeden, who, despite taking up nude photography later than Plüschow, soon overshadowed him, Plüschow was several times at odds with the law and charged with corruption of minors. Today, his photography is recognized for its artistic merits, even though it is generally considered somewhat inferior to von Gloeden's on account of his less graceful handling of lighting and the sometimes strangely stilted poses of his models. Not much is known about Plüschow's early life, except that he was born in Wismar as the eldest of seven brothers and sisters. His father Friedrich Carl Eduard Plüschow was an illegitimate child of Frederick Louis, Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the family home was Schloss Plüschow. In the early 1870s, he moved to Rome and changed his first name from "Wilhelm" to its Italian equivalent "Guglielmo". Initially making a living as a wine merchant, he soon turned to male and female nude photography. Later he also worked in Naples. In 1902, Plüschow, who was gay like von Gloeden, was charged with "common procuration" and "seduction of minors" and had to spend eight months in jail.Another scandal followed in 1907, and, in 1910, Plüschow left Italy for good and returned to Berlin

Poésies_arcadiennes


Amore e arte Arcadia


By Wilhelm von Gloeden


Nice Bush


Adrien Deriaz, Swiss strongman, photographed at the turn of the 20th. century at the height of his fame.


1970s-alternative-living


Hairy and Hung


1960s-Marine Dress Blues


1950s-stockholm


Hairy Stud


Worker


1850's


early


Pose


Beef Cakes









WWII


Tom Knott


Frank Hillgardner & Bill Hillgardner


Roman


Turkish Bath 1905


Hairy