American photographer George Platt Lynes was BOTD in 1907. Born in East Orange, New Jersey, he was raised and educated in Massachusetts, before taking a gap year in France in 1925. While in Paris, he met and socialised with American expatriates including Gertrude Stein, through which he met literary gay couple Glenway Wescott and Monroe Wheeler. Lynes returned to the United States, studying briefly at Yale before returning to France, where he lived in a thruple with Wescott and Wheeler for over a decade. He developed an interest in photography, forging friendships with artists including Jean Cocteau, and began working for Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country and American Vogue. In 1935, his childhood friend (and notorious homosexual) Lincoln Kirstein invited him to photograph the principal dancers of the American Ballet Company. The resulting photos were praised for their innovative use of lighting, props and posing, becoming hugely influential on dance photography. He photographed the major artistic figures of the mid-20th century, including Stein, Cocteau, Cecil Beaton, Tennessee Williams, Marc Chagall, Igor Stravinsky and Marianne Moore. Alongside his commercial photography, Lynes took thousands of homoerotic and nude photographs of men (including of the young Yul Brynner). A friend of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, he donated much of his erotic photography collection to the Kinsey Institute. In 1943, Lynes fell in love with his studio assistant George Tichenor, ending his relationship with Wescott and Wheeler, though they remained friends. After World War Two, he and Tichenor moved to Los Angeles, befriending writers Christopher Isherwood, Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley and costume designer Adrian, and undertaking commissions for American Vogue. Lynes died in 1955 of lung cancer, aged 48. Now considered one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, his work is displayed in London’s National Portrait Gallery, the Centre Pompidou Musée National d́Art Moderne in Paris New York’s Guggenheim Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Donald Windham‘s 1972 novel Tanaquil was based on Lynes’ life. His work and legacy was explored in the 2023 documentary Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes.