This highly praised monograph was selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the outstanding photography books of the year. As evidenced by the mythological series included in this first book of his work, Lynes stands as one of the great American Surrealists. His extensive work with portraiture and the ballet are invaluable documents of American cultural life during the thirties and forties. This book also includes perhaps the finest selection of Lynes' work with the nude figure. Although neglected for over three decades, Lynes must now be considered one of the great fashion, dance, and portrait photographers in the history of the medium. Essays by George Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein, and Glenway Westcott are collected here.
This highly praised monograph was selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the outstanding photography books of the year. As evidenced by the mythological series included in this first book of his work, Lynes stands as one of the great American Surrealists. His extensive work with portraiture and the ballet are invaluable documents of American cultural life during the thirties and forties. This book also includes perhaps the finest selection of Lynes' work with the nude figure. Although neglected for over three decades, Lynes must now be considered one of the great fashion, dance, and portrait photographers in the history of the medium. Essays by George Balanchine, Lincoln Kirstein, and Glenway Westcott are collected here.
George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye is a life of the gregarious American portrait, dance, fashion, and male nude photographer whose career spanned the late 1920s to 1955. From age 18, Lynes entered the cosmopolitan world of the American expatriate community in Paris when he became acquainted with the salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Intending to pursue a literary and small press publishing career, Lynes also began photographing authors like Stein, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Colette. Soon, he turned exclusively to photography, establishing himself as one of the premier fashion photographers in the Condé Nast stable, documenting the early ballets of George Balanchine, and pursuing his private obsession with seductive images of young male nudes almost never published in his time. Lynes's private life was as glamorous and theatrical as his images with their brilliant studio lighting and dramatic Surrealist set-ups. Barely out his teens, he met the publisher Monroe Wheeler who was already in a relationship with the emerging expatriate novelist Glenway Wescott. The peripatetic threesome maintained a polyamorous connection that lasted some 15 years. Their New York apartment became a mecca for elegant cocktail and name-dropping dinner parties. Their ménage-à-trois complicates our understanding of the pre-Stonewall gay "closet." This biography, drawing upon intimate letters and an unpublished memoir of Lynes's life by his brother, writer and editor Russell Lynes, paints a portrait of the emerging influence of gays and lesbians in the visual, literary, and performing arts that defined transatlantic cosmopolitan culture and presaged later gay political activism.
The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography explores the vast international scope of twentieth-century photography and explains that history with a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary manner. This unique approach covers the aesthetic history of photography as an evolving art and documentary form, while also recognizing it as a developing technology and cultural force. This Encyclopedia presents the important developments, movements, photographers, photographic institutions, and theoretical aspects of the field along with information about equipment, techniques, and practical applications of photography. To bring this history alive for the reader, the set is illustrated in black and white throughout, and each volume contains a color plate section. A useful glossary of terms is also included.
Illuminating the adventures of this extraordinary "menage-a-trois" in Paris during the time between the World Wars, "When We Were Three" tells a story of youthful passion and enthusiasm that speaks both to the enduring ties that held Wheeler, Lynes, and Wescott together, as well as to a bygone era. 110 photos.
This volume is a complete revision of the 1996 third edition, shares the ever-changing breadth of photographic topics with a special emphasis on digital imaging and contemporary issues. Produced by an international team of photographic and imaging experts with collaboration from the George Eastman House (the world's oldest photography museum), this fourth edition contains essays and photographic reproductions sharing information where photography and imaging serve a primary role, ranging from the atomic to the cosmic.
Photographer George Platt Lynes, painter Paul Cadmus, and critic Lincoln Kirstein played a major role in creating the institutions of the American art world from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. The three created a remarkable world of gay aesthetics and desire in art with the help of their overlapping circle of friends, lovers, and collaborators. Through hours of conversation with surviving members with their circle and unprecedented access to papers, journals, and previously unreleased photos, David Leddick has resurrected the influences of this now-vanished art world along with the lives and loves of all three artists in this groundbreaking biography.
Defining photography is impossible. Revealing it is another matter, and that's what The Concise Focal Encyclopedia of Photography does, with each turn of the page. History: The technical origins and evolution of photography are half of the story. The other half consists of the ways that cultural forces have transformed photography into a constellation of practices more diverse than any other mode of representation. Photographers can tell a more in-depth story through a photo like Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother than a journalist ever could with the written word alone. Major themes and practitioners: Over 25 entries, many with supporting illustrations, examine the figures, trends, and ideas that have contributed most heavily to the history and current state of photography. Contemporary issues: The issues influencing photography today are more complex than at any other time in its history. Questions of ethics, desire, perception, digitization, and commercialization all vie for attention. Hear what the experts have to say about crucial issues such as whether or not the images we take today will last the test of time, and if so, how? When material is covered this skillfully, "concise is no compromise. The Concise Focal Encyclopedia of Photography is packed with useful information, compelling ideas, and - best of all - pure pleasure.
