Daniel Cooney Fine Art presents the third solo exhibition of photographs by Robert Giard (1939-2002) titled Artists, Nudes and Gay Sites. The exhibition contains 26 vintage prints made between 1977 and 1998 chosen from three genres of Giard’s extensive archive. Included in the Artists category are intimate portraits of Arthur Tress, George Dureau, Edmund Teske and John Giorno pictured in William Burroughs Lower East Side “Bunker”. These portraits are selected from Giard’s iconic project Particular Voices which contains over 500 photographs of LGBTQ+ writers, artists and activists.
The exhibition prominently features Giard’s environmental male nude studies of friends lounging in bed, lying upon motorcycles and bathed in summer light outdoors. Gay Sites features images of prominent LGBTQ public spaces including Stonewall Bar, the AIDS Memorial Book at St. John the Divine and Sheridan Park in Greenwich Village.
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 a self-taught photographer.
Published in 1997 by MIT Press Giard’s Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, won the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Best Photography Book of the year. In 1998 the New York Public Library, which holds over 200 Giard prints in its collection, exhibited over 100 of these in the galleries outside the famed Rose Reading Room. For the first time in its history the words “Gay and Lesbian” hung on a special banner over the main entrance of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue.
After Giard’s untimely death in 2002, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University acquired Robert Giard’s complete archive as part of the Yale Collection of American Literature. Over the years Giard’s work has been acquired by major institutions across the U.S. and Canada including the National Portrait Gallery and the Library of Congress, The Brooklyn Museum and the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, The San Francisco Public Library and the Leslie Lohman-Museum of Art in New York.
Robert Giard : Artists, Nudes and Gay Sites
March 9 – April 29, 2023
Daniel Cooney Fine Art
508 West 26 Street, Suite 9C
New York, NY 10001
www.danielcooneyfineart.com
The exhibition is free and open to the public Wednesday – Saturday 11 – 6.
Inquiries can be directed to dan@danielcooneyfineart or 212 255 8158.
