The Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers supports the creation of work by emerging LGBTQ+ photographers whose projects address issues of sexuality, gender, or LGBTQ+ identity.
Portrait of Robert Giard; Cheryl Clarke and Jewelle Gomez, Courtesy The Estate of Robert Giard
“Photography is par excellence a medium expressive of our mortality, holding up, as it does, one time for the contemplation of another time. This motif infuses all portrait photography with a special poignancy. It is my wish that tomorrow, when a viewer looks into the eyes of the subjects of these pictures, he or she will say in a spirit of wonder, ‘These people were here; like me, they lived and breathed.’ So too will the portraits respond, ‘We were here; we existed. This is how we were.’”
— Robert Giard
ABOUT
In partnership with The Robert Giard Foundation, Queer|Art’s first international grant of $10,000 supports the creation of work by emerging LGBTQ+ photographers. The Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers is made possible entirely through support provided by The Robert Giard Foundation.
Previously known as The Robert Giard Fellowship (2008-2018), the newly relaunched grant is named in honor of photographer Robert Giard (1939-2002), a portrait, landscape, and figure photographer whose work focused on LGBTQ+ lives and issues. The grant focuses on supporting emerging LGBTQ+ photographers whose projects address issues of sexuality, gender, or LGBTQ+ identity. As of this year, the award for the grant winner has increased from $7,500 to $10,000, and also now includes a special award of $5,000 for a first-runner up.
Funds can be requested to support new or ongoing work at any stage of development. For questions, email Robert Giard Grant Manager Ka-Man Tse at ktse@queer-art.org.
2020 ROBERT GIARD GRANT WINNER & RUNNER-UP
ANNIE FLANAGAN, 2020 WINNER
Alabama, 2018
Annie Flanagan will receive a $10,000 cash grant to support the development of a project which combines their experience as a professional photographer covering news stories in rural America and their lived experience as a queer person and artist exploring rural communities. Flanagan asks us to consider “What do we stow away while being so focused on documenting the lives of others?”
Annie Flanagan (b. 1986) is a photographer whose work is rooted in the documentary framework and focuses on gender, sexuality, trauma particularly in rural North America. In 2018, Annie received a Master of Science from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication. Annie has contributed to publications including The New York Times, The Players’ Tribune, Smithsonian Magazine, The Washington Post, ESPN, FOAM Magazine and Mother Jones. Annie grew up in Washington, D.C. and currently splits their time between New Orleans and Vermont.
“I’m comfortable in the peripheral, inhabiting the space close enough for intimate imagery, yet distant enough to prioritize the success of the image over all. I listen but I hardly console. I’m hired to photograph people so brave in their existence, with my queer perspective, but I hardly allow myself to understand my own. And I lie about my identity when on assignments where it’s clear it’s unwelcome. When I return home, I photograph my friends and the landscapes with compulsion, grabbing onto every moment. My submission is an attempt to bridge this gap between my two modes of operating.”
–Annie Flanagan
Paul Mpagi Sepuya, 2020 judge, on Flanagan’s work:
“I’m drawn to Annie Flanagan’s application as they ask themselves, while criss-crossing the rural United States on editorial assignments, what are they hiding and how do they negotiate their own queer identity to balance photography as work and photography to understand themselves. I hope that the fellowship will allow Flanagan to take time away from editorial work to deepen their investigation of rural queer life in America.”
CLIFFORD PRINCE KING, 2020 RUNNER-UP
Looking For Langston, 2016
Clifford Prince King will receive a $5,000 cash grant to support the development of his work celebrating gay black male domestic life. King documents black men at home, celebrating black queer men in a familiar, yet unseen, perspective through intimate scenes.
Clifford Prince King (b. 1993) is a photographer based in Los Angeles, CA. As an artist who did not attend college or formally study the medium, his imagery is uniquely his own. After graduating high school, King began documenting his intimate relationships, which has since evolved into a way to challenge, explore, and negotiate concepts of black gay sexuality, masculinity, and community. In 2016, King moved to Los Angeles to further his practice. In the last two years, King has photographed for Out Magazine, Gay Times Magazine, and has worked with designers Come Tees, Phlemuns and No Sesso. In 2019, King had his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at New Image Gallery and produced a short film for Notes on Intimacy, a group show curated by Alima Lee at Shoot the Lobster Gallery.
“The photograph series I am currently working on is an homage to home life, to subtleties that present a feeling of togetherness, friendship, sacred bonding; our implied contract to take care. Two young men dancing in the kitchen after a nightcap, holding an almost-finished blunt up to a lover’s lips. The moments that we see so quickly, slowed down, frozen. Layered within these images are nods to something beyond, a code hidden in plain sight, known only to those who sit within a shared place of knowledge. A poster hanging in the foreground, wigs on a dresser, small stacks of books with their spines just visible; a collection of items that signify this is where blackness resides.”
– Clifford Prince King
Efrem Zelony Mindell, 2020 judge on King’s work:
“Clifford Prince King is a thoughtful arbiter of personalities and relationships. What is tender and what is beautiful is more than a standard of aesthetics. In King's work there is room for moments in-between, the feelings just before, and the sweetness after an action.”
2020 FINALISTS
Phyllis Christopher
J Houston
Jessica Martinez
Nelson Morales
Bryson Rand
2020 GIARD GRANT JUDGES
From left to right: Kimberly Drew, photograph by Travis Matthews; Guadalupe Rosales, photograph by Freshjive; Elle Pérez, courtesy of the artist
Kimberly Drew (New York City) is a writer, curator, and activist. Drew received her B.A. from Smith College in Art History and African-American Studies. She first experienced the art world as an intern in the Director’s Office of The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her time at the Studio Museum inspired her to start the Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art, sparking her interest in social media. Drew's writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Vogue, Glamour, Playboy, and Teen Vogue and she has executed Instagram takeovers for Prada, The White House, and Instagram. Drew recently left her role as the Social Media Manager at The Met. Her upcoming book, "Black Futures," which she is co-editing with Jenna Wortham is due in 2020. You can follow her at @museummammy on Instagram and Twitter.
Guadalupe Rosales (Los Angeles) is an artist based in Los Angeles. Rosales has been building an archive of vernacular photographs and ephemera connected to Latinx culture in Southern California. Her projects exist as both archives of physical objects and crowd sourced digital archives, assembled on her widely-followed Instagram accounts: @Veteranas_and_Rucas and @Map_Pointz. Guided by an instinct and self-representation to create counter narratives, Rosales tells the stories of communities often underrepresented in official archives and public memory. With a participatory approach to her practice, Rosales aims to celebrate the voices of others through their archives and memories. Guadalupe Rosales received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016. She is the 2019 recipient of Gordon Parks Foundation fellowships.
Elle Pérez (New York City) was born in 1989 in Bronx, New York and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Since receiving their MFA from Yale School of Art in 2015, Pérez has worked primarily in photography, depicting the intimate moments, emotional exchanges, and visceral details of their subjects and landscapes. Imbued with desire and a profound sense of care for their subjects, the photographs depict the traces of queer experiences and reflect the ever changing nature of identity.
In addition to the selected judges above, adjudication for the 2021 Giard Grant included participation by members of The Robert Giard Foundation’s Board, including artist Paul Mpagi Sepuya.
ABOUT ROBERT GIARD
Robert Giard, 1985. Photo by Toba Tucker, Courtesy The Estate of Robert Giard
Robert Giard (1939-2002) was a portrait, landscape, and figure photographer who came to the practice of photography relatively late in life. In 1972 he began to take photographs, concentrating on landscapes of the South Fork of Long Island, portraits of friends, many of them artists and writers in the region, and the nude figure. He is best known for photographing over 500 LGBTQ+ writers and activists. A selection from this project, Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, was published in 1997 by MIT Press and led to a groundbreaking exhibit at the New York Public Library the following year.
In 1985, after seeing a performance of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, as the AIDS crisis raged, Giard decided to turn his camera towards the LGBTQ+ literary community to preserve a record of queer lives and histories. He began documenting LGBTQ+ literary figures, both established and emerging, in a series of unadorned, yet sometimes witty and playful portraits that would eventually number over 500 by the time of his death.
Giard’s work can be found in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the San Francisco Public Library, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; his complete archive, including work books and ephemera, can be found in the American Collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
ABOUT THE ROBERT GIARD FOUNDATION
The Robert Giard Foundation was formed in 2002 to preserve Robert Giard’s photographic legacy and to make the full range of his work accessible to a wide audience. The Foundation promotes the use of Giard’s work for educational purposes and supports public programs and continued scholarship focusing on queer literature in America and LGBTIQ+ cultural and political movements. The Foundation also arranges for the permanent preservation of Giard’s photographs, writing and ephemera in museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions. Through the Robert Giard Grant for Emerging Photographers, the Foundation extends Giard’s legacy by encouraging current and future generations to document, depict, and interrogate past and present LGBTIQ+ cultures. The grant was first established in 2008 in cooperation with the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
ARCHIVE
2009-2019
Above: Roberto Tondopó, Holy Name of San Sebastián, 2015-2017. Robert Giard Grant Recipient, 2019.