"GEORGE PLATT LYNES: PORTRAIT 1927-1955". Collectif. Editions Twin Palms, Santa Fe. 1994. Edition originale. Imprimé au Japon. in-4, couverture toilée noire sous jaquette photo. Non paginé (144p). Texte en anglais de Lincoln Kirstein, illustré de 114 reproductions photographiques noir & blanc, pleine page, par George Platt Lynes.

 

"Two of the most useless questions that continually plague critics are these: "Is Photography An art?" with its inevitable corrollary: "Is Greater Art greater or more Minor than Minor Art?" Both questions get themselves asked in front of these portraits by Georges Lynes. Greatness aside, Lynes fixed the face of nearly every artist and writer and musician of importance in his epoch, in a unique attitude. He has seen  their faces as a symbol of the particular quality of their essential talent, not as a melodramatic mask which reflects the corroboration of a public icon. There is a big market for such journalism, because it makes every famous face a close-up of nervous eccentricity or muscular mastery. Lyne's faces remained private faces. Sometimes he used accessories in the manner of symbolic badges; sometomes an object found around the studio suggested itself as a good positive or negative complementary shape, but his décor never got into gadgetry, and although he took some of the best fashion pictures of his time, the portraits are never fashion plates. They are dandiacal and elegant, but they do not date…" Lincoln Kirstein.

 

Ref LPB0913