George Platt Lynes rare original vintage 1952 gelatin silver photograph of dancer Francisco Moncion taken in the sand dunes near the Pines on Fire Island, New York. Photo is from Moncion’s personal photographic collection of work by Platt Lynes. Moncion was a close personal friend of Platt Lynes and frequent subject in his photography. This is a well known image reproduced in many publications on his work and in the collection of many art museums. 

Photograph is #1 of 2 different poses in this collection taken by Platt Lynes at Fire Island Pines in 1952. 

#1 Photo is 7.5 x 9.5 inches, gelatin silver on heavy paper in excellent condition.
 
George Platt Lynes (1907–1955), was a gregarious American portrait, dance, fashion, and male nude photographer whose career spanned the late 1920s through the early 1950s. From age eighteen, Lynes entered the cosmopolitan world of the American expatriate community in Paris when he became acquainted with the salon of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. He began photographing authors like Stein, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and Colette and soon established himself as one of the premier fashion photographers in the Condé Nast stable, documenting the ballet companies of George Balanchine/Lincoln Kirstein, and pursuing a private obsession with seductive images of young male nudes rarely published in his lifetime. Platt Lynes photographs are in the collections of every major art museum and university archive including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art in NY, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Yale Art Museum, and the Smithsonian. 

Francisco Moncion (July 6, 1918 – April 1, 1995) was a charter member of the New York City Ballet. Over the course of his forty year career, choreographers George Balanchine, and Jerome Robbins in the New York City Ballet created 22 major roles for Moncion including the Dark Angel in Orpheus, Death in La Valse, Prince Ivan in Firebird, and the Boy in Afternoon of a Faun. He was also a choreographer and a talented painter who exhibited alongside Miro, Picasso and Carrado Cagli. Moncion was a popular model for many famed mid-century (late 1930s, 1940s - 1950s) figure photographers including Platt Lynes, Carl van Vechten, Maurice Seymour, Cosmo-Sileo and Lon.