For Immediate Release
May 9, 2019
ROBERT GIARD
Particular Voices: Photographs of LGBTQ Writers, Artists and Activists, 1980’s – 90’s
Exhibition dates: June 6 – July 26
Daniel Cooney Fine Art is pleased to announce our second solo exhibition of photographs by Robert Giard. The exhibition will contain 53 vintage prints from Giard’s extensive series of over 600 photographs of writers, artists and activists created from 1985 to 2002. The collection on view has been curated with regard to Giard’s consciousness of presenting the under represented population of the time. The exhibition is organized to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
In 1985, after attending a performance of Larry Kramer’s “The Normal Heart” Giard decided to devote his energy to photographing LGBTQ writers, from famous playwrights to emerging novelists to unsung poets and pioneering performance artists. “Particular Voices” is an extraordinary visual record of the flowering of queer voices in the wake of Stonewall and the AIDS crisis, while also paying homage to many earlier 20th Century activists and writers who had urged the creation of a community identity, or otherwise gave public voice to gay and lesbian sensibilities. “Particular Voices” is a unique record of a cultural moment in American letters.
The book “Particular Voices” was published in 1997 by The MIT Press and won the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Best Photography Book. It was released in conjunction with a large exhibition at the New York Public Library, which holds the largest institutional collection of Giard’s work with 150 prints in the collection. In 2004, the renowned Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University acquired Robert Giard’s complete archive as part of the Yale Collection of American Literature. The Giard archive at the Beinecke contains more than 1,500 vintage prints and 7,800 related work prints. These images include all of Giard’s portraits of gay and lesbian writers, along with all other portraits of friends, artists, writers, and commissioned works. In addition, Giard’s landscapes, still lifes, and nudes complete the photographic archive of his complete career.
Robert Giard was born in Hartford, CT in 1939 and lived in Amagansett, NY until his death in 2002. He received a B.A. in English Literature from Yale and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Boston University and was self-taught as a photographer. His work has been exhibited internationally.