George Platt Lynes (1907–1955) was one of America’s greatest photographers, yet he has never been properly canonized. A successful fashion and commercial photographer, Lynes shot covers of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and portraits of celebrities like Katharine Hepburn and Orson Welles. A close friend of Lincoln Kirstein, who co-founded the New York City Ballet, Lynes’s stills of ballets and ballet dancers are in a class all their own—pearlescent, surreal. Lynes was one of the first openly gay American artists, and his deepest artistic interest was the male nude. In keeping with the laws and attitudes of the time, the nudes—daring, sensual, often explicit—were never shown publicly but were known and admired in gay circles. A new documentary directed by Sam Shahid, an art director for Calvin Klein and Valentino, finally gives the long-neglected photographer his due. “Every artist has the right to be judged by his best work,” Lynes once said. “Certainly the best of these nudes are my best.” —Paulina Prosnitz

Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes is available for streaming on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime and in theaters in New York and Los Angeles starting May 31.