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In this issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality (SGS), we offer an unusual collection: a Portfolio of text and images from and about the photographic work of Robert Giard (1939–2002).† Giard’s work mirrors the interdisciplinary interests of SGS. Having first received an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Boston University (1965) and having taught intermediate grades in New York City, he began, by 1972, to photograph. He concentrated on landscapes of the South Fork of Long Island (where he lived); portraits of friends, many of them artists and writers in the region, predominantly gay; and the nude figure.
This initial period of Giard’s work is addressed in this Portfolio by Allen Ellenzweig’s essay, “Facing Facts: An Analysis of the Early ‘Nude Self-Portraits’ by Robert Giard.” It seems appropriate to begin with these nudes not only because of their timing but also because representation of the body, which has received various treatments in this journal, is a prime topic in sexuality and gender studies. Here, Ellenzweig, a scholar of the homoerotic photograph who has previously published in SGS (Ellenzweig, 2007), recounts how “at the start of his career and with the novice’s seriousness of purpose but modesty of means, Giard took on one of those elemental aesthetic ‘chores’ that bear the weight of historical convention: the self-portrait” (this issue, p. 88). Ellenzweig provides an aesthetic appreciation of these nude self-portraits situated in the culture and history of gay sexuality at the time of their making.
Ultimately, though, it would be in the area of the formal portrait that Giard’s career made its most indelible mark. And, as it turns out, many of his portraits were of people occupied with matters within this journal’s purview: writers working on themes of sexuality, desire, and gender in their social, historical, and psychological contexts. To say “as it turns out” is, however, misleading. This portion of Giard’s work was rather more overdetermined than t