- Call number
- *MGZEB 98-4744
- Physical description
- 16 albums (approximately 650 photographic prints), b&w, 32 x 30 x 8 cm; 16 albums (approximately 650 photographic prints), b&w, 32 x 30 x 8 cm
- Preferred Citation
- George Platt Lynes photographic scrapbooks, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library
- Repository
- Jerome Robbins Dance Division
- Location
- *MGZEB 98-4744
- Access to materials
- Request an in-person research appointment.
- Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online.
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. 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.
Digital Assets
Key terms
Names
- Balanchine, George
- Danilova, Alexandra
- Kaye, Nora, 1920-1987
- Lynes, George Platt, 1907-1955 (Photographer)
- New York City Ballet
Subjects
Material types
Titles
Using the collection
Location
Jerome Robbins Dance DivisionNew York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor