Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers

by Robert Giard, Julia van Haaften (Foreword by), Julia Vanhaaften (Foreword by)

Winner of the 1998 Lambda Literary Award for Photography and Visual ArtsIn 1985 photographer Robert Giard set out to create an archive of portraits of gay and lesbian writers from across the United States. The result is the most extensive photographic record of the gay and lesbian literary community ever undertaken. This book contains 182 of the more than 500 portraits Giard has made. The collection underscores the diversity of the gay population and encompasses a broad range of literary fiction, poetry, drama, personal narrative, history, criticism, and political/activist statements. Taken as a whole, the portraits and excerpts encompass the many-faceted history of the gay/lesbian experience in the United States over the past seventy-five years.The book also features a foreword by Julia VanHaaften, Curator of Photographs at the New York Public Library; an introduction by Giard, "Self-Portrait of a Gay Reader"; an essay by Christopher Bram on gay writing; and an essay by Joan Nestle on lesbian writing.

Genres: Queer, LGBT, Lesbian, Nonfiction, Literature, History, Biography

120 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had this book for a number of years and satisfied myself with just leafing through the photographs of the writers contained within, occasionally reading the accompanying extract from a piece of their work, or a poem. So a while ago I decided to just read it through cover to cover, a few every day, and this way I discovered many writers who I had not really heard of (they are mostly American, so many won't have been published in the UK). It is often anthologies that can encourage us to delve a bit deeper into a writer's works, so I shall be trying to do just that.

The author/photographer Robert Giard took, I think, took all of the photos in the 1980s and 90s, so there is a sense of history to the book even now. Michael Cunningham had only recently started being published when his portrait was taken. May Sarton had died just two years before the book came out. Authors familiar to us now had not been published at all. The layout of the book adds to this idea of a progression, starting with authors involved in the Gay Rights Movement, the extracts reflecting their lives and hopes, then moving through the years as things improved, before AIDS wreaked its havoc in the '80s. Then follows a more upbeat outlook from the '90s, a settling down almost where personal, intimate lives become the focus.

It is a quite extraordinary book really, and is pleasingly accurate and representative of both female and male authors from many ethnic backgrounds.

[Larry-bob Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Giard's photography project of Gay and Lesbian writers succeeds not only as a documentary project but also artistically on its own photographic quality. My only wish is that the book was longer to include even more of his photographs (his NY Times obituary stated that he had completed nearly 600 portraits in this series.)