New Video Release

The Beinecke Library at Yale released a new video today about the Robert Giard archive, a unique and important collection providing a significant resource for the study of literary America in the late twentieth century.

The archive contains more than 1,500 vintage prints, 7,800 related work prints, as well as countless negatives and contact sheets. It also contains extensive ephemera including correspondence, records, diaries and other papers that tell the story of Giard’s relationships with LGBTQ+ writers and activists like Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, Gloria Anzaldua, and Samuel R Delany, Edward Albee and Tony Kushner.

The work diaries in the Giard archive offer valuable insights into the photographic processes that enabled him to become a master printer. The personal diaries offer an extraordinary document of the relationships that Giard nurtured with the subjects of his photographic lens. The archive was acquired in 2004, two years after his death, from his life partner, Jonathan Silin.