The Robert Giard Foundation
  • About
    • About Robert Giard
    • Particular Voices
    • Giard at Yale
    • Mission Statement
    • Board Members
    • Contact
  • Galleries
    • Figures in Landscapes
    • Gay Sites
    • Landscapes
    • Nudes
    • Particular Voices
    • Portraits
    • Still Lifes
    • The Grandmother Winifred Portraits
  • News
  • Exhibitions
  • Fellowship
    • About
    • Current Recipient
    • Past Recipients
    • How to Apply
  • Donate
  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Bare Hedge, 1981

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Cemetery in April , 1981

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Convention Center, NYC, 1986

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    The Creeks 14, 1991

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    The Creeks 1, 1991

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    The Creeks 3, 1991

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Fence and Lines, 1978

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Garden Frames, 1979

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Hedge and Hillocks, 1981

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Hedge and Tree, 1979

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Untitled

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Latticed Pergola, 1979

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Mirror in a Driveway, 1979

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Untitled

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    Untitled

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    TV with Empire State Building, 1996

    Learn More

  • Title of Image

    Landscapes

    White Poles in Field, 1979

    Learn More

Landscapes


Most of these photographs were taken within a few blocks of where I live in a small town near the end of Long island. I tend to do much of my shooting during the late autumn, winter, and early spring when many of the houses are boarded up for the season and the area is quiet and somewhat deserted. When separated from human use, these grounds assume a mysterious, even somewhat sinister air. They seem inhabited, animated, but not by people - rather by the objects, sometimes stately, sometimes banal, which occupy these domestic spaces. They are presences, wordless presences, these hedges and pools, windows and cellar doors, porch posts and gables.

In these particular photographs I am aware of a connection with specific works and artists: Braun's garden scene with two figures by an Italian Lake: Atget's Saint-Cloud; Steichen's Orangerie; the Stieglitz front porch with grape leaves at Lake George; Sudek's parks and gardens of Prague; Walker Evans's America; and the closing sequence of Antonioni's Eclipse. In these creations the landscape is made to live, even when no human society is included; in fact, especially then.

These photographs are a meditation upon my immediate environment, which happens to be a combination of resort, suburb, and small town. At those times of the year when I am at liberty to contemplate it most intensively, the predominance of form as defined by light recalls a formal garden. Perhaps this series may be viewed as still another version of the pastoral, a more suburban version, one that is vaguely menacing.

I have always been interested in the theme of reconciliation. In this series the reconciliation I seek is between notions of the beautiful and the banal, between the nostalgic and the contemporary elements in a landscape, between the photograph as an evocation of the past and a document of the present, between the allusiveness of poetry and the evidence of prose. I wish to uncover Eden in a suburban backyard.

  • Bare Hedge
  • Cemetery in April
  • Convention Center, NYC
  • The Creeks 14
  • The Creeks 1
  • The Creeks 3
  • Fence and Lines
  • Garden Frames
  • Hedge and Hillocks
  • Hedge and Tree
  • Untitled
  • Latticed Pergola
  • Mirror in a Driveway
  • Untitled
  • Untitled
  • TV with Empire State Building
  • White Poles in Field

The Robert Giard Foundation
555 Fifth Avenue, 11th Floor New York, NY 10017
Contact Us

About Robert Giard photo of Robert Giard

Robert Giard was a portrait, landscape, and figure photographer.

More about Robert Giard »

More about “Particular Voices” »

  • Galleries
    • Figures in Landscapes
    • Gay Sites
    • Landscapes
    • Nudes
    • Particular Voices
    • Portraits
    • Still Lifes
    • The Grandmother Winifred Portraits
  • News
  • Exhibitions
  • Fellowship
    • About
    • Current Recipient
    • Past Recipients
    • How to Apply
  • Who We Are
    • Mission Statement
    • Board Members
  • Resources
    • Fales Library & Special Collections, Bobst Library, NYU
    • Stephen Bulger Gallery
    • Yale Beinecke Library
    • New York Public Library