Gay Thursday: Before We Were Gay

By Pookie -
George Platt Lynes (1907-1955)

As soon as he began using a camera, Platt Lynes began photographing nudes – primarily male. In the peripatetic period of his young life, when he was traveling back and forth between Paris and the United States on an annual basis to be with his lover Monroe Wheeler he wrote that there were some nudes that he would rather not mail to France because "they showed too much."

George Platt Lynes, 1934


His preference in photographing nudes was clearly male ... There was Lincoln Kirsteins's lover the handsome dancer José Martinez, the commercial artist Clement Hurd, Platt Lynes' official lover Monroe Wheeler and the third member of their ménage à trois Glenway Wescott, as well as Glenway's younger brother Lloyd ...

George Tichenor, c. 1939


Male Nude, c.1937


Charles Smutney and Charles Stanley, 1941


Neel Bate and Ernest Henry, 1954


Mel Fillini and Ted Starkowski, 1954

His photographs of the young gymnasts Charles "Tex" Smutney and Charles "Buddy" Stanley are among his most beautiful and most inspired, Taking a low camera angle he had the young models assume the inventive poses they used in their gymnastic routines.

Charles Smutney and Charles Stanley, 1941


Charles Smutney and Charles Stanley, 1941


Untitled Nude, 1933-1937


Umberto Visbal, 1954


William Harris, 1945


Platt Lynes did nothing that could be considered pornographic although it is clear from his letters that at least one photo session involving two men evolved into a sex session afterwards.
. . . .
Despite his crumbling finances and fading health, Platt Lynes' interest in the male nude did not flag and he was still photographing the naked bodies of men a few months before his death.

Excerpted from George Platt Lynes by David Leddick

For more about Platt Lynes read the article at Naked Came I (contains full frontal nude photos)

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