Portrait : the photographs of George Platt Lynes, 1927-1955

George Platt Lynes, Lincoln Kirstein

Before his death in 1955, George Platt Lynes began editing his work for a planned book of portraits. The book never transpired, and Lynes bitterly complained to friends about how unimaginative publishers were. Portraits 1927-1955 presents an impressive body of his oeuvre -- from early work in Paris to his final New York City sittings. Tennessee Williams, Colette, Andre Gide, Gertrude Stein, Edith Sitwell, W. H. Auden, Paul Cadmus, Igor Stravinsky, E. M. Forster, William Inge, Burt Lancaster, and T. S. Eliot are among those included. Many rarely seen portraits, including several revealing self-portraits, are reproduced here for the first time in large-format sheet-fed gravures.