Robert Giard is best remembered for his figurative and portrait photography. He received a B.A. from Yale (1961), then an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Boston University (1965). For a time he taught intermediate grades at the New Lincoln School, but by 1972, he began to photograph, concentrating first on landscapes of the South Fork of Long Island, portraits of friends (many of them artists and writers in the region), and nude figures. His most famous work includes formal portraits of significant gay and lesbian authors, including Edward Albee, Allen Ginsberg, David Leavitt, and Michael Cunningham, among others.
