Body Language : The Queer Staged Photographs of George Platt Lynes and PaJaMa

**Examines early practices of staged photography in visualizing queer forms of relation.** __Body Language__ is the first in-depth study of the extraordinary interplay between George Platt Lynes and PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret Hoening French). Nick Mauss and Angela Miller offer timely readings of how their practices of staging, collaboration, and psychological enactment through the body arced across the boundaries of art and life, private and public worlds, anticipating contemporary social media. Using the camera not to capture, but to actively perform, they renounced photography’s conventional role as mirror of the real, energizing forms of world-making via a new social framing of the self. "Examining this innovative collaboration as a turning point in the history of photography and in queer American culture. Body Language is the first in-depth study of the extraordinary interplay between photographer George Platt Lynes and PaJaMa (painters Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret Hoening French). These enigmatic photographs--issuing from intimate private networks and queer sexualities--helped ground friendships and also found their way into the public worlds of fashion and fame. Nick Mauss and Angela Miller offer timely readings of how practices of staging, collaboration, and psychological enactment through the body arced across the boundaries of art and life, private and public worlds, anticipating contemporary social media. For these audacious artists, the camera was used not to capture, but to actively perform. Renouncing photography's conventional role as mirror of the real, Lynes and PaJaMa energized forms of worldmaking via a new social framing of the self"-- Provided by publisher Examines early practices of staged photography invisualizing queer forms of relation. BodyLanguage is the first in-depth study of the extraordinaryinterplay between George Platt Lynes and PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, JaredFrench, and Margaret Hoening French). Nick Mauss and Angela Milleroffer timely readings of how their practices of staging,collaboration, and psychological enactment through the body arcedacross the boundaries of art and life, private and public worlds,anticipating contemporary social media. Using the camera not tocapture, but to actively perform, they renounced photography'sconventional role as mirror of the real, energizing forms ofworld-making via a new social framing of the self Contents Introduction The Uses of Photographs PaJaMa Drama Notes and Acknowledgment Index