Directing: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-

Who the hell is George Platt Lynes? I had no idea, myself, until seeing this documentary film about him listed in this year’s Seattle International Film Festival schedule. It turns out, he was an artist of photography, in his prime in the 1920s and 1930s, who was by all intents and purposes openly gay. More to the point, he was incredibly talented, his work was infused with male sexuality, and that combination is likely the biggest reason his vast and stunning body of work has gone unnoticed for decades.

Anyone who knows anything about the cross section of art history and gay history has heard of Robert Mapplethorpe—who was clearly influenced by George Platt Lynes. Lynes pre-dates even Mapplethorpe by a good five decades.

After seeing Hidden Master, I am dying to see a major exhibition of Lynes’s work. But, as director and co-writer Sam Shahid tells us, no American museum will touch this body of work. Several art historians and curators are interviewed for this film, and Shahid briefly includes some commentary on the “double standard” of art exhibition that plasters the naked female form all over the place, even when sexually evocative—sometimes even provocative—and yet won’t do the same for the naked male form, which by contrast threatens people. There appears to have been multiple books published about him and his work, however, and I just placed a hold on the single one of them apparently carried by the Seattle Public Library.

That book was published in 1994 and evidently focuses on the body of work Lynes left to the Kinsey Institute—one of many fascinating things about George being that he both became good friends with famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey, and was an active participant in his research. Hidden Master, the movie, is a far more contemporary look at Lynes’s life and work, having been finished nearly three decades later.

What’s more, this film, ten years in the making, features interviews with multiple people who knew Lynes personally. In all but one case, the interview subjects passed away shortly after the interview, giving the film a bit of an “under the wire” quality. We’re talking about a photographer who was himself a stunningly beautiful young man a full century ago, after all. Even the interview subjects who knew him would have had to have been young even compared to Lynes when they knew each other—in the forties, or perhaps the early fifties. George Platt Lynes dyed of lung cancer in 1955, at the fairly young age of 47.

The crucial element of Hidden Master, though, is the countless examples of his work featured: a seemingly endless slide show of gorgeously rendered, black and white photos of male nudes, no less beautiful for how unsubtle they often are. The lighting of his subjects is incredible, and the themes of sexual desire are stunning, particularly for the time—people don’t know today how early on there was precedent for art like this, and that’s what makes this film so crucial. I could not stop thinking, as I saw example after example of Lynes’s photography, that I could have easily believed this work had been done today. God knows I never would have assumed these photos were taken between the twenties and the forties, without them being contextualized for me.

A fair bit is made of Lynes’s “physical snobbery,” in that he never chose average looking people as his subjects. His nudes were nearly all young men, and without exception the men were beautiful. Lynes also worked as a fashion photographer, his female subjects also exclusively beautiful. In apparently one exclusive case, he even had a sexual relationship with one of his women subjects. There are nude photos of her as well.

It should be noted, not all of his photos were sexual, although he seemed to have an appreciation for the naked human form whether it was sexualized or not. He even took nude photos of his brother, who was straight, and helped find more models culled from his college friends.

Which is to say, in just about every way you can imagine, George Platt Lynes was so far ahead of his time it’s mind boggling. This was a man fully self-possessed, comfortable in his own skin, casually defiant in his sexuality—all a full hundred years ago. He was himself so beautiful he fit right in with his subjects. He pushed boundaries in more ways than with his sexuality, also sensual, nude photos of Black and White men together. From today’s vantage point, there is an element of privilege there that both cannot be denied and which was about a century away from being even a hint of a part of anyone’s vocabulary. It’s even acknowledged in this film that the racial provocativeness has an element of exploitation to it.

Although not a lot of time is spent on it, there is some acknowledgement in Hidden Master that Lynes was an imperfect man, sometimes a little manipulative, particularly in sexual situations. To me, these details are classic elements of people whose beauty allows to get away with what others can’t. Somewhat on the flip side of this, Lynes was also the third partner in what we now would call a polyamorous relationship, and which itself lasted decades. Even by mainstream queer standards this is incredibly forward-thinking. There is no indication Lynes thought in these terms at all, however. He was only ever just completely and utterly himself.

I do appreciate the sexual frankness of Hidden Master, clearly a positive byproduct of having a queer story told by queer people. Given the nature of virtually all of Lynes’s male nudes, it would make no sense to shy away from it. It turns out Lynes did also take a few sexually explicit photos, just a couple of which do we see, during a brief discussion of the fine line between “art” and pornography, and how it gets applied differently between men and women. In any case, I could not find any indication that Hidden Master has received an MPA rating at all, but this film is definitely not for children.

I feel a deep, abiding appreciation for this film—not just its construction, but its very existence. It’s full of people who lament the lack of Lynes’s presence in any serious look at art history, and the film makes a very strong case for this man to get the kind of appreciation he has long been denied. His personal life at his particular time in history is deeply fascinating in its own right, but nothing comes even close to the vitality of the photography work itself. Whether or not you see this movie, do yourself a favor and just look him up. I am eager to learn more just because of this film.

*Both erotically charged and a multi-level challenge to the viewer: George Platt Lynes is worth your time.*

Overall: A-