George Platt Lynes photographic scrapbooks

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George Platt Lynes photographic scrapbooks

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Collection Data

Description: The collection includes approximately 650 black and white photographs of ballets, dancers and choreographers from the earliest days of what would later become the New York City Ballet. Among the 49 dances in the collection are The cage (Robbins), ca. 1951, The duel (Dollar), ca. 1951, Fancy free (Robbins), ca. 1944, Firebird (Balanchine), 1949, La gloire (Tudor), ca. 1952, Les illuminations (Ashton), ca. 1950, Jones Beach (Balanchine), 1950, Orpheus (Balanchine), 1948, Swan lake (Balanchine), 1951, and Tyl Ulenspeigel (Balanchine), 1951. Personalities represented include Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, Erik Bruhn, Alexandra Danilova, Margot Fonteyn, Martha Graham, Nora Kaye, and John Kriza.
Names: Lynes, George Platt, 1907-1955 (Photographer)
Dates / Origin: Date Created: 1935 - 1954 (Approximate)
Library locations: Jerome Robbins Dance Division; Shelf locator: *MGZEB 98-4744
Topics: Ballet companies -- Dance photography; Balanchine, George; Danilova, Alexandra, 1907-1997; Kaye, Nora, 1920-1987; New York City Ballet
Genres: Photographs; Scrapbooks
Notes: Acquisition: The albums were compiled by The Jerome Robbins Dance Division staff.; Biographical/historical: Photographer George Platt Lynes was born in East Orange, New Jersey in 1907. He attended the Berkshire School in Massachusetts, where Lincoln Kirstein was a classmate. Lynes set up his studio in New York City in 1932 and began taking photos for fashion magazines. In 1935, he was commissioned to photograph the dances and dancers of the American Ballet (later New York City Ballet), which he did through the early 1950s. Lynes also took many nude photos, mostly male. Lynes died in New York City in 1955 of lung cancer, at the age of 48.; Content: Alphabetical by title or surname.
Physical Description: Extent: 16 albums (approximately 650 photographic prints) : black and white ; 32 x 30 x 8 cm.
Type of Resource: Still image
Identifiers: NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b20497345; MSS Unit ID: 23112; Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 6b3e47f0-acc5-0133-e3fa-00505686a51c