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 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. This year, the grant winner will receive $10,000, and the first-runner up will receive $5,000.
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.
COURTNEY WEBSTER & MEG TURNER, 2021 WINNERS
Collaborative duo Courtney Webster & Meg Turner will receive a $10,000 cash grant to support the development of their project, Patricide, which interrogates dominant culture and its reproduction of tropes that reinforce the image of the ideal or heroic body as almost exclusively a white male body. Often centering Webster, a queer person of color, as a heroic and swoon-worthy protagonist, the artists render visible an alternative lexicon wherein the erased and invisible become seen, empowered, and celebrated. On receiving the 2021 Robert Giard Grant, Webster and Turner write, “this funding and recognition will allow us to expand the mediums we use and to open up access to more spaces to share it with the public. As two queer artists we are so excited to have the support of the Robert Giard Foundation and Queer|Art for this project.”
Courtney Webster, image courtesy of the artist.
Meg Turner, image courtesy of the artist.
Courtney Webster is an independent film director, producer, and media accessibility activist who most recently produced the Thank God For Abortion anthem video with the artist Viva Ruiz. Meg Turner employs printmaking, photography, sign making, and installation to focus on queer fantasy and contemporary critique. Her first solo museum show, Here & Now, opened at The Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans in 2019.
Webster and Turner began their collaborative photo practice in New Orleans in 2015. Merging their filmmaking and photography practices, Webster and Turner carefully research, plan and build each shoot collectively. According to the artists, their winning series, Patricide, “has always been about questioning dominant narratives in the media and understanding them as the mechanism that deliberately manufactures who is legitimate and entitled to dignity and power. These narratives impact the ways we live, develop our identities, and ultimately figure out how to exist in communities.” The work was accompanied with public street murals and has additionally been documented in the UK Magazine, Heroine. Individual works from the series have also been shown across New York and New Orleans in places including The Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Bureau of General Services Queer Division, BRIC Arts, Wallach Gallery, and the University of New Orleans Gallery.
Mariama Attah, 2021 Robert Giard Grant judge, remarked on Webster & Turner’s work:
“Patricide, the collaborative project by Meg Turner and Courtney Webster, is an exciting reminder of the many voices, perspectives, and experiences within the photography community. The touring exhibition is such a clever and involved way of expanding these dominant narratives.”
BIANCA STURCHIO & RIEL STURCHIO,
2021 RUNNERS-UP
As first runners-up, Bianca Sturchio & riel Sturchio will receive a $5,000 cash grant to support their collaborative photo-documentary project, Chasing Light, which platforms self-expression and provides visibility to individuals at the intersection of LGBTQ+, non-binary, and chronically ill or disabled identity. riel Sturchio and Bianca Sturchio are particularly eager to move forward with their work and support underrepresented queer artists, writing, “this award supports our vision of opening up Chasing Light to other folks at the intersection of non-normativity, disability, and LGBTQ+ identity. We believe there is great power in vulnerability and sharing stories, and feel grateful for the ability to initiate this new expansion.”
riel & Bianca Sturchio, image courtesy of the artists.
Bianca and riel are twin collaborators. Bianca Sturchio is a queer and disabled artist who works primarily in paint and collage, and collaborates in the photographic project Chasing Light. She uses her Masters of Social Work degree from the University of Southern Maine (2020) to work with underrepresented populations in the Portland, ME area. Bianca pairs her creative and academic backgrounds to advocate for disability justice increase representation for disabled artists. riel Sturchio is a queer interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes analog photography, printmaking, and sound sculpture. Their work often revolves around the body and their experiences with disability and chronic illness. They received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin (2018).
riel Sturchio writes of their ongoing collaborative project, “Chasing Light has allowed Bianca and I to self-direct our visibility, investigate the representation of queer identity and non-normative bodies, and explore the shifting role of image-maker and subject. Our relationship with the work stems directly from our individual and shared experiences with disability, chronic illness, and non-normative queer identity. Now, we wish to turn this lens outward and offer experiences for non-artists and creative individuals who identify at the intersection of LGBTQ+, non-binary, and chronically ill or disabled identity to see themselves through self-directed documentary photographs and the support of guided workshops.”
2021 ROBERT GIARD GRANT FINALISTS
2021 ROBERT GIARD GRANT JUDGES
Left to right: Mariama Attah, image courtesy of the artist; Emily Oliveira, image by Lee O’ Connor; Leonard Suryajaya, self-portrait.
Mariama Attah (Liverpool, UK) is a photography curator, editor and lecturer with a particular interest in overlooked visual histories, and using photography and visual culture to amplify under and misrepresented voices. Mariama is curator of Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. She was previously Assistant Editor of Foam Magazine. Prior to this, she was Curator of Photoworks, where was responsible for developing and curating programs and events including Brighton Photo Biennial and was Commissioning and Managing Editor of the yearly magazine Photoworks Annual.
Emily Oliveira (New York) is an interdisciplinary artist and performer. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and a current MFA candidate at Yale. She has exhibited and performed widely in venues including Vox Populi, Wave Hill, Disclaimer Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Paradice Palase, SOHO20, Ars Nova, Judson Memorial Church, and Brown University. She has received awards and residencies from MAD, AIR Gallery, Yaddo, BRIC, and Ars Nova. She was a 2019 Van Lier Fellow at Wave Hill, and a 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow. In 2023, she will be the Abbey Awards Fellow at the British School at Rome.
Leonard Suryajaya (Chicago) uses his work to test the boundaries of intimacy, community and family. He uses photography, video, performance and installation to show how the everyday is layered with histories, meanings and potential. BFA, 2013, California State University, Fullerton; MFA, 2015, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; 2017, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Selected exhibition venues include Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago; Benaki Museum, Greece; Photoforum Pasquart, Switzerland; National Library, Singapore; Wrightwood 659, Chicago; Aperture Gallery, NY. His work is included in collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection, Mana Contemporary and Center for Photography at Woodstock. He has received various awards including the Aaron Siskind Foundation Award, an Artadia Award, and the Robert Giard Foundation Fellowship.
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
2020
2009-2019
Left to right: Annie Flanagan, Alex at Queer Youth Prom, Alabama, 2018. Robert Giard Grant Recipient, 2020; Roberto Tondopó, Holy Name of San Sebastián, 2015-2017. Robert Giard Grant Recipient, 2019.