22 Photos of LGBTQ+ Writers, Artists, & Activists of the '80s and '90s

Giard's Images From 1980s to early 2000s

In the summer of 2019, Daniel Cooney Fine Art (danielcooneyfineart.com) showed a second solo exhibition of photographs by Robert Giard. The exhibition contained 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 was curated with regard to Giard's consciousness of presenting the under represented population of the time. The exhibition was organized to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Robert Giard's "Particular Voices" ran thru July 26, 2019.

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.

Pamela Sneed, New York City, 1992

15 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Sneed is a writer, performer and visual artist. She is author of two books of poetry, "Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery" and "KONG and Other Works". Sneed has won the Lambda Literary Award and has performed internationally.

Sylvia Rivera, Brooklyn, 1999

15 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Rivera was a Latin American gay liberation and transgender rights activist. She fought for the rights of people of color and low income queer and trans people. She was a founding member of the "Gay Liberation Front" and the "Gay Activists Alliance". With her cohort Marsha P. Johnson she co-founded the Street "Transvestite / Transgender Action Revolutionaries" (STAR) dedicated to helping LGBTQ youth.

Charles Henri Ford, New York City, 1989

15 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Ford (1908-2002) was a surrealist poet, magazine editor, filmmaker, photographer, collage artist and co-author of America's first gay novel "The Young and Evil". He was also part of Gertrude Stein's inner circle in Paris in the 1930s and, in the 1960s, an important influence on Andy Warhol.

Harry Kondoleon, New York City, 1992

17 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Kondoleon (1955-1994), was a novelist and playwright. He was awarded the Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships.

Taylor Mead, New York City, 1991

15 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Mead (1924-2013) was a poet, actor and bohemian recruited by Warhol as one of his first superstars. Mead made 11 Warhol films including "Taylor Mead's Ass" (1964) and about 130 movies in total, many of them so spontaneous that they involved only one take.

Norman Wong, New York City, 1992

15 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Wong is a writer and activist who is best known for his 1995 collection of short stories titled "Cultural Revolution".

Pomo Afro Homos, San Francisco, 1994

15 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Pomo Afro Homos was an African American gay theater troupe from 1990 to 1995 founded in San Francisco by choreographer-dancer Djola Bernard Branner, actor Brian Freeman, and singer, dancer, and actor Eric Gupton. Later, Marvin K. White joined the group. Their work includes "Fierce Love: Stories From Black Gay Life" and "Dark Fruit" performed at Lincoln Center.

Jacquie Bishop, New York City, 1988

15 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Bishop is a writer, activist and health care worker. She is a founding member of MABA, the Mass Black LGBT Alliance. Her work is included in "A Woman Like That: Lesbian and Bisexual Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories".

Justin Chin

15 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Justin Chin was a Malaysian-American poet, essayist and performer. His poems interrogate the personal, political, and commercial implications of claiming a queer Asian American identity. Chin was the author of several collections of poetry, including "Bite Hard", "Harmless Medicine", and "Gutted", which won the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award for Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His prose collections, which weave criticism with memoir and fiction, include "Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes, & Pranks", "Burden of Ashes", "Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms", and "98 Wounds". Chin died in 2015.

George Stambolian, Amagansett, 1987

15 x 15" gelatin silver print.

Stambolian was a key figure in the gay literary movement in New York during the 1960s and 1970s. He was best known as the editor of the "Men on Men" anthologies of gay fiction. Stambolian died of AIDS in 1991.