Watchlist

What to watch: Hidden Master

A documentary by Sam Shahid shines a light on the photography of George Platt Lynes.

Gaydar

06 Jul 2025 — 4 min read

While he made his professional reputation as a photographer of celebrity portraits and fashion shoots, George Platt Lynes was a photographer who had a passion for photographing male nudes.

In this documentary, Hidden Master, Sam Shahid brings to life the story of George Platt Lynes - his lovers, his relationships, and his photography which was radically explicit for the era.

London screenings

10 July: Curzon Soho
11 July: The Garden Cinema (inc. Q&A with Sam Shahid)
13 July: Bertha DocHouse (inc. Q&A with Sam Shahid)

For our podcast, How To Date Men, we caught up with Sam Shahid - director of the documentary - for a behind-the-scenes look at the life and work of George Platt Lynes.

In the conversation, we talk falling in love, the vanity of beauty, and why Kinsey wanted photos of naked men.

Listen to the episode

George Platt Lynes was a photographer who was working in the 1930s through the 1950s and your film tells the story of his life, but also his passion for photographing naked men. How did you first connect with the work of George Platt Lynes?

Rizzoli's the publisher called me and said, would you like to do design a book, The Male Dude by George Platt Lynes? And I said, absolutely. I knew the name and I knew some of his images.

After we designed the book and edited and got it all put together, I turned around to the head of the Platt Lynes foundation. I said, I want to do a documentary. This man should be known.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT -The Estate of George Platt Lynes - published with permission

You were able to interview on camera a number of people who knew George Platt Lynes. What was the thing for you that unlocked how to put this narrative together?

We contacted the people that knew him, there was only five - they're all dead now, except for one, Don McCarty, and he's in his 90s.

It took 10 years to make this film. When the pandemic happened, it was a blessing for me in a way - only because I was able to read his letters. There were 300 of his letters. George was a beautiful writer. The letters really revealed a lot about George. I fell in love with him, like everybody else did.

How did your perception of George change through the making of the documentary? Did that love deepen or shift or evolve?

It deepened. Not only was he beautiful, but he was very free. He was naked when he photographed people. He loved his body. He knew he was beautiful.

In the documentary, you explain how a lot of the photographs of George Platt Lynes have ended up in the art collection of Frederick Koch. I'd heard of the Koch brothers, but I really didn't know anything about Frederick Koch. Did Frederick collect a lot of gay art or was he particularly interested in George Platt Lynes?

In the gay circle here in New York, everyone knew that Fred Koch had the biggest homoerotic collection of photographs. But no one was ever allowed to see them, nor did he ever speak of them. He was a real closet case. But we discovered later that when he was younger, Fred was quite wild.

I was lucky, to be honest with you. Towards the end of making the film, Fred died. I contacted John Olson - the executor of the estate, and he agreed that we could view the collection.

As well as the photographs from Platt Lynes and other photographs, he had enormous collection of homoerotic magazines. He also collected correspondence - including letters written by George to the models in his photographs.

In the film, you explain how a number of George's negatives are now with the Kinsey Institute - that was an aspect I wasn't aware of previously. Was George photographing what Kinsey was writing about? It seemed that Kinsey's interest was the fact that here was the evidence that he was looking for somehow to illustrate his theories?

Yes, you're right, but McKinsey fell in love with the guys. He loved the photographs, believe me. It's even been said that they had an affair.