From visionary art director Sam Shahid, Hidden Master features a stunning collection of photography from the 1930s-50s, uncovering the life of George Platt Lynes, less known: his gifted eye for the male form, his long-term friendships with Gertrude Stein and Alfred Kinsey, and his lasting influence as one of the first openly gay American artists, before Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar, elevating the male nude to high art.
George Platt Lynes started his career by photographing celebrities, and he is best known for his portraits and extravagant fashion photography. One of the earliest portraits was taken by Lynes at Wheeler and Wescott’s French Riviera residence, capturing Jean Cocteau with a telescope as he awaited the arrival of a fleet of sailors at the bar downstairs. Later on, Lynes became part of Gertrude Stein’s circle of expat intellectuals and took portraits of Isamu Noguchi, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Katharine Hepburn.
However, George’s heart, his passion, and his biggest talent lay elsewhere in his work with the male nude. Lynes shone an arduous path, capturing intimacy, physicality, and even interracial homoeroticism. This work, sensual and radically explicit for its time, has only recently begun being fully discovered and appreciated for the revolution that it represents — a man capturing his fantasies as a gift, a window to a future his camera saw coming before anyone else.
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