Greenwich Entertainment Acquires ‘Hidden Master’ Documentary On George Platt Lynes, Pioneering Photographer Of Male Nudes

EXCLUSIVE: Greenwich Entertainment has acquired U.S. rights to the award-winning documentary Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes, about the pioneering photographer and one of America’s first artists to live as an openly gay man.

Sam Shahid, a renowned art director in film, advertising, and fashion, made his directorial debut with Hidden Master, which has screened at film festivals around the world including the recent Palm Springs International Film Festival and the San Diego International Film Festival, where it won the Breakthrough Documentary award. Greenwich plans to release the documentary this spring in theaters and on home entertainment platforms.

“Hidden Master tells the story of innovative photographer and bon vivant George Platt Lynes,” notes a release, “featuring a stunning collection of photography from the 1930s-50s, uncovering the life of Lynes less known: his gifted eye for the male form, his long-term friendships with Gertrude Stein and Alfred Kinsey, and his lasting influence as one of the first openly gay American artists.”

The release continues, “George Platt Lynes began his career photographing celebrities, and it’s those portraits along with his extravagant fashion work that he’s best remembered for today. However, George’s heart, his passion, and his greatest talent lay elsewhere, in his work with the male nude. This work, sensuous and radically explicit for its time, has only recently begun being fully discovered and appreciated for the revolution that it represents — a man capturing his fantasies as a gift, a window to a future his camera saw coming before anyone else.”

Lynes (1907-1955) contributed to Harper’s Bazaar and Town & Country magazines, and headed the Hollywood office of Vogue for a time. Among the noted people he photographed were actress Gloria Swanson, painter Edward Hopper, writers Marianne Moore, Jean Cocteau, Aldous Huxley, and poet e.e. cummings. He quietly made homoerotic images of the male nude, but destroyed much of that work before his death from lung cancer. Some surviving material was later obtained by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.

“A fascinating reclamation of the life and art of a photographer whose fashion photography prefigured Avedon, whose nude photography prefigured Mapplethorpe and whose lifestyle anticipated the openness that only became mainstream in the decades after his death,” Greenwich co-president Edward Arentz said in a statement.

“George has given us a stunning gift with his passion and love for the male nude,” observed director Sam Shahid. “Add to that an absolutely fascinating life, and I felt it was my obligation to protect that legacy and share it with the world.”

Hidden Master was produced by Matthew Kraus, Nando de Carvalho, and John MacConnell. Greenwich’s Arentz negotiated the acquisition deal with Obscured Pictures’ R.J. Millard on behalf of the filmmakers.