Celebrity portraits and noted nude studies by a renowned photographer who spent a brief time as a Yale student are among the images featured in "George Platt Lynes Returns to Yale," two parallel exhibits opening on Thursday, Sept. 24, at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Jonathan Edwards College (JE) master's house.
When Lynes arrived on the Yale campus in the fall of 1926, he expected to pursue a career as a writer. He had, during the previous summer in Europe, forged friendships with such avant garde artists as Gertrude Stein and Jean Cocteau, and had featured works by Stein and Ernest Hemingway in his "As Stable Pamphlets," which he published from his parents' house in Englewood, New Jersey. A year later, having left Yale after just one semester and opened a bookstore in his hometown, Lynes received a gift that was to change the entire course of his career -- a view camera.
"Lynes had hoped to become a writer but instead became a portraitist to writers," writes Patricia C. Willis, curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Library, in an essay in the catalogue accompanying the Lynes exhibit.
Celebrity subjects. While still in his 20s, the self-taught photographer took portraits of such authors as Stein, Cocteau, Katherine Ann Porter, Carl van Vechten, Marianne Moore, Colette and W.H. Auden. His subjects during this period also included noted artists from other fields, such as sculptor Isamu Noguchi, as well as a number of Lynes' acquaintances, such as British flying ace Harold Balfour. In the early 1930s the photographer also began experimenting with surrealistic still-lifes, working with Julien Levy, who later hosted Lynes' first important exhibition at his Madison Avenue gallery.
Eventually, Lynes opened his own photography studio in New York City and began doing fashion and portrait work for such magazines as Town and Country, Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. He photographed the dancers and repertoire of the fledgling American Ballet (now the New York City Ballet), an association that continued over 20 years, and he undertook a project to create surrealistic photographic interpretations of mythological scenes.
Lynes' vision. From the beginning, Lynes' photographic style was both artistic and distinctive. "[N]o one can view a collection of the photographs of George Platt Lynes without appreciating his conception of them as art constructed of simple props, startling lighting effects, and physical beauty," writes Gary Haller, JE master, in the exhibit catalogue. "Although his range of subject matter is wide -- ballet, mythology, fashion, portraits, nudes, surrealism -- a Lynes photograph always has a recognizable feel and look."
In her catalogue essay, "The eye the organ of desire," Laura Wexler, assistant professor of American studies and of women and gender studies, writes: "Light in all of Lynes's photographs is a dialogic force. It traces the contours of limbs and muscles, highlights attributes of personalities, and pinpoints characteristic gestures with what seems to be an almost animate intelligence. It is important to remember, however, that this virtually sentient radiance is really Lynes's own production. Most of the light in Lynes's photographs is deliberate light, or lighting, an elegant studio ambience for which he was justly famous during his lifetime, and one which established the standard for the fashion photography celebrity portraiture of his era."
In the 1940s, Lynes began to lose interest in commercial work and left New York City for Los Angeles, where he headed Vogue Magazine's Hollywood studio. During the next few years, Lynes experimented with using minimal amounts of available light, using the technique to create images of composer Igor Stravinsky and authors Thomas Mann and Aldous Huxley, among others. In 1948, Lynes returned to New York and spent the next few years struggling financially as his health failed. He died of cancer in 1955 at age 48.
Most of the materials in the two exhibitions comprising "George Platt Lynes Returns to Yale" were drawn from the archives of the Beinecke Library, which houses many of Lynes' photographs and papers, as well as those of his associates. Other materials are on loan from the private collections of John Andersson and other individuals, as well as the D.C. Moore Gallery.
In addition to celebrity portraits, the displays include several of Lynes' studies of nude males. "It is very difficult to photograph the nude male figure as persuasively and as sexually as Lynes has done," writes Wexler. "...[I]n a Lynes nude, what we get is an interpretation of the erotic body as a body, the sexual person as a body, sensuality as an agreement between persons to be bodies with and objects for one another ..." Although these works were rarely exhibited during Lynes' lifetime, he did publish them in the years just before his death in the homoerotic magazine Der Kries under the pseudonyms Roberto Rolf and Robert Orville. Noted sex researcher Alfred Kinsey also purchased hundreds of Lynes' nude studies for use at his Bloomington, Indiana institute. Today, the photographer's nudes are "recognized as perhaps his most important legacy," notes Haller, who is also the Henry Prentiss Becton Professor and chair of engineering and applied science, and professor and chair of chemistry.
In conjunction with the Lynes exhibits, there will be two master's teas at the JE master's house, 70 High St. The first, "The Darkroom in the Rectory's Attic: George Platt Lynes and Photography," will be held on Thursday, Oct. 8, and will feature a presentation by Anatole Pohorilenko, author of the book "When We Were Three: George Platt Lynes, Monroe Wheeler & Glenway Wescott 1925-1935." The second, "A Reading of Correspondence between Gertrude Stein & George Platt Lynes," will take place on Thursday, Oct. 22, and will feature Harriet Chessman reading Stein's epistles and Beinecke archivist Timothy Young, who did the research for this program, reading Lynes' letters. Both events are at 4 p.m. and are open to the public free of charge.
"George Platt Lynes Returns to Yale" will continue through Friday, Oct. 30. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, located at the corner of Wall and High streets, is open for exhibition viewing 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. The display in Jonathan Edwards College is open to the public 4-6 p.m. on Thursdays or can be seen by appointment by calling 432-0380.