Olga Broumas. Provincetown, MA.

Robert Giard was born in Hartford, Connecticut. Not much is known about Robert's life as a child, at least until he attended college.

Source: http://robertgiardfoundation.org/about
Photo: http://robertgiardfoundation.org/images/site/giard-portrait.png

Olga Broumas was born on this date. She was born in Hermoupolis, Greece, and moved to the United States when she was 18 to attend the University of Pennsylvania. She received her BA from the university and eventually obtained her MFA from the University of Oregon. Her first collection of poems in English received the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1977.

Source: http://archives.getty.edu:30008/a/ampo20/bios/am22008.bio.html
Photo: http://images.brandeis.edu/cardphoto/7/F4460A7513EC085AF723EB751A7AF314F18DBED.jpg

While it was not the first riot, the infamous Stonewall Riots helped push gay liberation to its feet. The riots lasted for six days and was the violent clashes between police and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Police had attempted to raid the Stonewall Inn but had not anticipated the patrons reacting angrily and rioting against them.

Source: https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots
Photo: https://news.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Stonewall_01_2500.jpg?resize=1500,1000

Giard attended Yale and Boston, but surprisingly, not to earn a degree in photography. He only began to photograph landscapes of his new home, Long Island, and portraits of friends as well as the nude figure.

Source: http://robertgiardfoundation.org/about
Photo: http://robertgiardfoundation.org/images/site/Landscapes/bare_hedge_1981-copy.jpg

HIV/AIDs has yet to be cured. The start date is the official time that HIV/AIDs was published in an article. HIV/AIDs is a retrovirus that causes immunodeficiency in people. At first, it was seen as a "gay disease" which is wholly incorrect. Thousands upon thousands of people died from the epidemic.

Source: https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline
Photo: https://images.emedicinehealth.com/images/quiz/hivaids/hivaids-s2.jpg

The Normal Heart is a play that was written by Larry Kramer, a man who is still alive today. The Normal Heart is about the HIV/AIDs epidemic and is an angry play. After learning that the Dachau concentration camp had opened in 1933 with no reaction whatsoever from the German government, Kramer was inspired to write The Normal Heart based off of the lack of action done by the government, with AIDs replacing the role of Dachau and the United States government instead of the German government. Kramer also acted as an important role and figure in the creation of ACT UP.
Upon seeing this play, Giard was so moved by it that he then dedicated many of his photos to taking portraits of gay and lesbian literary wrights.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kramer#The_Normal_Heart
Photo: https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/tv_kramer3a.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=618&h=410&crop=1

This is a photo of Olga Broumas, a Grecian poet. Many of her poems include love between two women and are often written from a feminist standpoint. She is highly critical of the traditional family roles, as seen in her poems. She moved from Greece to the United States in order to attend college.
Source: http://archives.getty.edu:30008/a/ampo20/bios/am22008.bio.html
Photo: https://imagcees.nypl.org/index.php?id=1661013&t=w

This is the whole collection of Giard's portraits of contemporary activists or activists from the Stonewall Era. In general, these are people that Giard looked up to and drew inspiration from. Each portrait is separate and unique in it's own way while also maintaining unified in the face of opposition. The collection began in 1990, but it was officially published by MIT in 1997. A year later, the New York Public Library mounted the collection.

Source: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/particular-voices-portraits-of-gay-and-lesbian-writers-by-robert-giard#/?tab=about&scroll=24