George Platt Lynes
Best known for his work as a fashion and portrait photographer, George Platt Lynes began photographing as he traveled throughout Europe in the late 1920s. While abroad he developed relationships with artists including Jean Cocteau, Pavel Tchelitchew as well as the influential art dealer Julien Levy. In 1932 Lynes returned to New York and opened his first studio. That same year he was included in three exhibitions at Levy’s Madison Avenue gallery including a group show, “Surréalisme” and later a show with Walker Evans. Lynes’ early work, made during the late 1920s in Europe and New York, show the young photographer as an evolving modernist not unlike his contemporary Evans. His studies of light, shadow and form in Paris and New York’s Coney Island are an interesting precursor to his innovative fashion photographs and work for the American Ballet Company during the 1930s and 1940s.