ISAAC JULIEN: My name is Isaac Julian and I am a filmmaker and installation artist, or so my Wikipedia tells me so (laughter). But actually I'm someone who is really interested in making images.
The thing about George Platt Lynes work is that for me, there's a way in which he works with lighting and a certain theatricality.
My connection to George Platt Lynes originates from making a film called Looking for Langston in 1989. In fact, I should say that I completely worship his work. His work gave me a kind of language to try to look at gay culture in the 30s and 20s. And I looked at the photographs here as the kind of benchmark, really, for how I’m thinking about the male body in relationship to black-and-white photography and queer desire.
I think there's an amazing aspect to the use of the body as statue-like motifs. We see these bodies which are bandaged, and you can't help but feel there is this encroaching Second World War motif. But at the same time there's this play between Greek and Roman statues.
You think about the way that he made his works, works which were perhaps exchanged among friends, a community which at the time was criminalized. I mean the queer community and its artists at that particular time probably were quite open in their fields, but in the societal sense, it's still quite oppressive, and so, it's amazing to think that these images were made during this time, and in their way, they're very modern.