TIMELINE

1907

  • April 15 - George Platt Lynes born in Englewood, NJ

1920

  • Meets and becomes friends with Lincoln Kirstein at the Berkshire School.

1925 

  • Moves to Paris and joins Gertrude Stein’s inner circle, meeting Pavel Tchelitchew and Jean Cocteau

1926

  • Formal education ends with one semester at Yale in the autumn. GPL decides to become a bookseller and publisher. Studies bookstore management at Columbia University. (Leddick)

1927

  • Begins a 10-year romantic relationship with Monroe Wheeler and Glenway Wescott in NYC.

1928 

  • Opens and closes a bookstore in New Jersey. (Leddick)

  • Returns to France to live with Monroe Wheeler. (Leddick)

  • Photographs Jean Cocteau and Gertrude Stein. (Leddick)

  • Studies photo manipulation and darkroom techniques while befriending Surrealist photographers. (IMA)

  • Abandons plans to become a writer. (Leddick)

1929

1930

  • Begins to earn money by photographing close friends in Paris. (IMA)

  • Returns to New Jersey (Leddick)

1931

  • Continues to travel annually to Europe to visit Monroe Wheeler. (Leddick)

  • Meets Julien Levy aboard ship and the photographs they do together are exhibited in a Surrealism exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT (Leddick)

1932

  • Begins photographing the male nude.

  • Murals by American Painters and Photographers, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

  • Photographs of New York by New York Photographers, Julien Levy Gallery, New York, NY

  • GPL’s father’s death forces him to launch a serious career in New York as a commercial photographer. (Leddick)

1933

  • Starts photographing for Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and Henri Bendel and opens a studio of New York City.

  • Monroe Wheeler and Glenway Wescott move to New York City and the three men live together at East 89th Street. (Leddick)

  • GPL enjoys rapid success. (Leddick)

1934

  • Fifty Photographs by George Platt Lynes, Julien Levy Gallery, New York, NY (solo)

1935

  • Begins photographing the dancers of the American Ballet, a new company founded by his boarding school friend, Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine. These two also found the School of American Ballet and number of other companies before creating the New York City Ballet in 1949. PGL eventually photographs all of these companies. (Leddick)

1936

  • GPL’s photomontage, “The Sleepwalker” is included in the show Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.

  • Monroe Wheeler is the director of publications for the museum and Lincoln Kirstein is a junior member of the Board of Directors. (Leddick)

1937

  • Begins series of photographs depicting classic mythology to gain mainstream acceptance for his photography of the male nude. (until 1940) (IMA)

1938

  • By this time GPL has a highly successful commercial career, photographing for the major fashion magazines as well as advertising for all the most important New York designers and stores. He is also the preeminent portrait photographer for the leading magazines. He has become one of the top photographers, if not the top photographer, in New York. (Leddick)

1939

  • Throughout the years he has pursued his interest in nude studies, primarily male. He now creates a series of photographs based upon mythology, aided by Glenway Wescott, in an attempt to find a way of exhibiting the male nude. These photographs meets with little public success. (Leddick)

1940

  • The death of his assistant George Tichenor, with whom he was in love, in World War II is a great shot to him. He does not serve in the war and takes as a lover his former assistant’s brother, Jonathan Tichenor. He continues to be a very successful fashion photographer throughout the war and in 1944 takes an apartment on Park Avenue for himself with his new lover. Wheeler and Wescott are dismayed. (Leddick)

1946

  • Jonathan Tichenor leaves him to marry Bridget Bate Chisholm, a New York socialite and free of GPL. This is again a major shock to the photographer. (Leddick)

1947

  • He attempts to make a new start in Los Angeles as head of the Vogue studio there. He photographs many celebrities and does numerous nude studies but is not happy on the West Coast. (Leddick)

  • Opens a studio in Los Angles to e the West Coast photographer for Vogue. (IMA)

1948

  • Returns to New York City financially unstable and focuses on photography of male nudes, portraits, and the ballet. (IMA)

  • Begins sending work to the newly founded Institute of Sex Research, now known as the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, through Dr. Alfred Kinsey. (IMA)

  • He returns to New York with a new lover, Randy Jack, but finds the fashion industry has changed. He is no longer in great demand and his own interest in his commercial work is waning. His expensive lifestyle goes on, nevertheless, and he is increasingly in debt. (Leddick)

1951

  • GPL declares bankruptcy and loses his equipment to the bank but continues to publish work, under the pseudonym Roberto Rolf, in the German magazine Der Kries. (IMA)

  • He has never been able to recapture his position in the fashion world and has to declare bankruptcy. (Leddick) 

  • He move in and out of a series of apartments and is surrounded by young men, whom he photographs nude. He is published in the Swiss homoerotic magazine Der Kries under the pseudonym Roberto Rolf and Robert Orville. (Leddick)

  • Abstraction in Photography, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

1952

  • Meets Sam Steward (?)

1555

  • Plagued by debts, poor health and emotional instability in his private life, he is diagnosed in May as being terminally ill with lung cancer. He undergoes radium and chemotherapy and is well enough to take a last trip to Europe in the autumn. He returns to new York and is hospitalized in November. He continues to leave the hospital to attend the theater and tennis matches. (Leddick)

POST MORTEM 

1960  

  • Portraits by George Platt Lynes, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (solo)

1977  

  • documenta 6, Documenta, Kassel, Germany

1980  

  • George Platt Lynes: Photographs from the Kinsey Institute, Grey Art Gallery at New York University, New York, NY (solo)

1992  

  • Classic Dualities: The Photographs of Len Prince taken at the Tampa Museum of Art, Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, GA

  • Figure/Form: The Nude in 20th Century Photography, Jan Kesner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1993  

  • George Balanchine and his Dancers: the Ballet Photography of George Platt Lynes, The Kinsey Institute Gallery, Bloomington, IN (solo)

1999  

  • Figurescapes, Radiant Light Gallery, Portland, ME

2001  

  • Interwoven Lives: George Platt Lynes and his Friends, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY

2002  

  • Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada

2003  

  • Fashioning Celebrity: Photographs of George Platt Lynes, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX (solo)

  • Herb Ritts Private Collection, Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

  • Artseal Gallery Photo SF Preview, Artseal Gallery, San Francisco, CA

  • Flesh Tones - 100 Years of the Nude, Robert Mann Gallery, New York, NY

2005  

  • George Platt Lynes, Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art, New York, NY (solo)

  • Fashioning Celebrity: Photographs of George Platt Lynes, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX (solo)

  • 20th Anniversary Show, Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art, New York, NY

  • Beyond Real Part 1 Dressing Up, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Australia

  • From the Source, Fashion Photographs, Corkin Gallery, Toronto, Canada

  • Summer Skin, Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2006  

  • Busy going crazy: The Sylvio Perlstein Collection, La Maison Rouge, Paris, France

  • American Icons, Corkin Gallery, Toronto, Canada

2007  

  • MODE: BILDER, NRW Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft, Dusseldorf, Germany

  • Classic Beauty: Part 2 Photographs of the Male Nude, Throckmorton Fine Art, New York, NY

  • VIP, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia

  • Igor Stawinsky - ich muss die kunst anfassen, Museum of Moderne Rupertinum, Salzburg, Austria

2008  

  • Vintage Ballet Photographs, Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (solo)

  • Pre-Revolutionary Queer: Gay Art and Culture Before Stonewall, The Kinsey Institute, Bloomington, IN

  • Vintage / Vantage, Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art, New York, NY

2010  

  • 25 Years / 25 Works, Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art, Washington, D.C.

  • Staff Picks 2010, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, NY

  • Nature & Nurture: Exploring Human Reproduction from Pregnancy through Early Childhood, The Kinsey Institute, Bloomington, IN

  • Flirting with Bling, Corkin Gallery, Toronto, Canada

2011  

  • George Platt Lynes, Throckmorton Fine Art, New York, NY (solo)

  • Psyche & Muse: Creative Entanglements with the Science of the Soul, Beinecke Library at Yale University, New Haven, CT

  • An Intimate Circle, DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY

  • Narcissus Reflected, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland

2012  

  • George Platt Lynes, Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, NY (solo)

2013  

  • Fashion: Photography from the Condé Nast Archives, Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia, Milan, Italy 

2014  

  • George Platt Lynes, Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art, Lambertville, NJ (solo)

  • Bernard Perlin died

2015 

  • George Platt Lynes II died (nephew)

2018  

  • Transmissions, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 

2019  

  • Sensual / Sexual / Social: The Photography of George Platt Lynes, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN (solo)

  • Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY