Lynes Drawn Between Couture and the Closet

Bonus: Tex and Buddy

Charles “Tex” Smutny was a young man when he first came to George Platt Lynes’s studio with his friend Charles “Buddy” Stanley. Few of Platt Lynes’s subjects so perfectly embodied youth and innocence as did this athletic, fair- haired figure. Soon after, Smutny left New York to serve in World War II, and has never since posed for the camera. After the war, he resumed his education, married, and worked for many years as a physical education teacher. He never saw any of the photographs by George Platt Lynes and was surprised to learn that these portraits taken half a century ago had met with some renown. Here we see Smutny and Stanley, two of the photographer’s most outstanding models, posed in the quintessential dramatic Platt Lynes lighting.