Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 22, 2006|Volume 35, Number 3

One of the items on view in the exhibtion of works by Yale graduate Robert Giard is this photograph, "Paul Monette," taken in the late 1980s.

JE exhibit features photographer's
portraits of gay and lesbian authors

Selections from a recently acquired archive of works by American photographer Robert Giard will be featured in an exhibition opening on Thursday, Sept. 28, in the Jonathan Edwards College (JE) master's house, 70 High St.

Over 60 works drawn from the Giard archives acquired last spring by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library are featured in "The Photography of Robert Giard: Portraits, Landscapes, Still Lifes and Figurative Work."

A Yale graduate (B.A. 1961), Giard was a self-taught photographer, who began a project during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s to document the phenomenon of gay and lesbian letters in America. "Particular Voices," a collection of over 150 of Giard's portraits alongside excerpts from the subjects' writings, was published by the MIT Press. Many of those portraits are featured in the JE show.

"Giard's photodocumentary project grew out of the cultural ferment of the 1960s, '70s and '80s, when a new generation of lesbians and gay men sought to create a new gay culture and subjectivity that would transcend the silence, shame and invisibility they believed had characterized gay life before them," writes George Chauncey, professor of history at Yale, in the catalogue accompanying the JE exhibit.

"His generation's determination to overcome the invisibility of gay life and the silence imposed on homosexuals -- its insistence on the power of naming oneself and on the importance of words -- gave writers special prominence," adds Chauncey. "Giard's 'Particular Voices' project aimed to document the diversity of those writers and pay tribute to the power of their words."

In another catalogue essay, Tirza True Latimer, lecturer in women and gender studies and in the history of art at Yale, notes that "for many gays and lesbians, the promise of connection and validation initially unfolds in the imaginary sphere of art and literature. ... Giard's portraits of gay and lesbian writers embody the imaginary community within which he himself evolved as a reader, a photographer and a gay man. At the same time, Giard's photographs form a homophile history of contemporary culture."

The JE show also features examples of Giard's landscapes, still lifes and nudes. "In each of these genres," writes Allen Ellenzweig, president of the Robert J. Giard Jr. Memorial Fund, in his catalogue essay, "Giard engaged in portraiture -- of a face, of a place, of a figure, of an object -- and in that direct engagement with who or what was before him, he revealed his own unsparing curiosity, his sometimes mordant powers of observation, and a deep vein of human empathy that was his hallmark."

Ellenzweig and Jonathan Silian, executor of The Robert J. Giard Jr. Estate, will be the guests at a master's tea marking the opening of the exhibition at 4 p.m. on Sept. 28. This will be followed by a reception from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Also in conjunction with the exhibition, there will be a master's tea with George Chauncey at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 19.

Both events are free and open to the public.

"The Photography of Robert Giard" is on view through Nov. 20 most Thursdays, or by appointment at (203) 432-0356. Another JE exhibit, "The Sculpture of George R. Anthonisen," is also on view through Nov. 20 on the patio of the JE master's house.

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