Robert Giard (July 22, 1939 - July 16, 2002) was an American portrait, landscape, and figure photographer.

Life

A native of Hartford, Connecticut, Giard majored in English literature and received a B.A. from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

in 1961, then an M.A. in Comparative Literature from

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...

in 1965. For a time he taught intermediate grades at the New Lincoln School. By 1972, he began to photograph, concentrating on landscapes of the South Fork of Long Island, portraits of friends, many of them artists and writers in the region, and the nude figure. In 1974, Giard settled in Amagansett, Long Island, with his life partner, Jonathan Silin, an early childhood educator, where they remained for nearly thirty years until Giard's death. In the beginning years of his career, Giard did much of his landscape photography during the late autumn, winter, and early spring when many of the fashionable houses of the Hamptons were boarded up for the season.

Career

Ultimately, it would be in the area of the formal portrait that Giard¹s career made its most indelible mark. In 1985, after seeing a performance of

Larry Kramer Laurence David Kramer (June 25, 1935May 27, 2020) was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to Lo ...

¹s ''

The Normal Heart ''The Normal Heart'' is a largely autobiographical play by Larry Kramer. It focuses on the rise of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City between 1981 and 1984, as seen through the eyes of writer/activist Ned Weeks, the gay founder of a pro ...

'' dealing with the crisis of AIDS, Giard set about documenting in straightforward, unadorned, yet sometimes witty and playful portraits, a wide survey of significant gay and lesbian literary lights. His portraits included such iconic figures as Edward Albee,

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, and

Adrienne Rich Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the ...

, as well as emerging novelists making their first mark, including

Sapphire Sapphire is a precious gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum, consisting of aluminium oxide () with trace amounts of elements such as iron, titanium, chromium, vanadium, or magnesium. The name sapphire is derived via the Latin "sa ...

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, Shay Youngblood, and

Michael Cunningham Michael Cunningham (born November 6, 1952) is an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his 1998 novel '' The Hours'', which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1999. Cunningham is a senior lectur ...

. A selection of these portraits, culled from the five hundred examples he had by then already amassed, was published by MIT Press in 1997 as the anthology ''Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers'', which then served as the companion volume to the New York Public Library's 1998 exhibition of the same name. At the time of his death in July, 2002, just shy of his 63rd birthday, Giard was working on a portrait documentation of the three hundred twenty-one grant recipients from around the country of the Thanks Be To Grandmother Winifred Foundation, which until 2001 supported projects by women fifty-four years and older that benefited other mature women. Grants supported research and artistic projects, as well as efforts to alleviate social, economic, and medical problems for women in a given locality. Giard, traveling the country by train, bus, and plane (he never had a driver¹s license) succeeded in photographing two hundred forty-one of the women grantees, and kept a journal of his travels and his many visits to a richly diverse group of American women in small towns and major cities. Robert Giard was the recipient of many grants and awards, and the published version of ''Particular Voices'' won a Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Best Photography/Art Book in 1997. Giard had a long and distinguished solo and group exhibition career throughout the United States. Examples of his work are in collections of Brooklyn Museum,

San Francisco Public Library The San Francisco Public Library is the public library system of the city and county of San Francisco. The Main Library is located at Civic Center, at 100 Larkin Street. The library system has won several awards, such as '' Library Journals ...

, New York Public Library, and the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

. Giard¹s complete archive, including work books and ephemera, is now housed in the American Collection of the

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts. Es ...

at Yale University.

Legacy

The Robert Giard Foundation was formed in 2002 with the aim of preserving his photographic legacy, promoting his work for educational purposes, and encouraging the work of young photographers. The annual Robert Giard Fellowship is a $10,000 grant to visual artists whose work addresses sexuality, gender, and issues of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender identity.

References

External links

* Robert Giard Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
"Larry Kramer and Molly, NYC" Portrait, Library of CongressRobert Giard Photographs Collection, San Francisco Public LibraryRobert Giard Holdings, Brooklyn Museum10th Annual Lambda Literary Awards HomepageThe Robert Giard Foundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Giard, Robert 1939 births 2002 deaths American LGBT photographers American gay artists American portrait photographers Artists from Hartford, Connecticut People from Amagansett, New York Photographers from Connecticut Photographers from New York (state) 20th-century American photographers Yale University alumni Boston University College of Arts and Sciences alumni 20th-century American LGBT people