In 1985, after attending a performance of Larry Kramer's The Normal Hart - one of the first dramas dealing with the impact of AIDS on gay life - Robert Giard decided to devote his energies as a photographer to some aspect of the gay and lesbian community.

Thus was born his two-decade long project of photographing over 600 gay and lesbian writers - from famous playwrights to emerging novelists to unsung poets and pioneering performance artists.

Particular Voices: Portraits of Jewish Gay and Lesbian Writers is an extraordinary visual record of the flowering of queer Jewish voices in the wake of the Stonewall Rebellion and the AIDS crises, while also paying homage to many earlier 20th Century activists and writers who had urged the creation of a community identity, or otherwise gave public voice to gay and lesbian sensibilities.

This unique record of LGBT Jewish Americans features: Blanche Weisen Cook (1941- ), Bernard Cooper (1951- ), Martin Duberman (1930- ), Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005), Allen Ellenzweig (1950- ), Lillian Faderman (1940- ), David B. Feinberg (1956-1994), Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), Doris Grumbach (1918- ), Richard Howard (1929- ), Arnie Kantrowitz (1940- ), Irena Klepfisz (1941- ), Tony Kushner (1956- ), David Leavitt (1961- ), Stan Leventhal (1951-1996), Lawrence Mass (1946- ), Joan Nestle (1940- ), Esther Newton (1940- ), Richard Plant (1910-1998), Lev Raphael (1954- ), Adrienne Rich (1929- ), James Saslow (1947- ), Jonathan Silin (1944- ), and Savina Teubal (1926-2005).
 
This evening in celebration of the Robert Giard Exhibition is in association with Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, The James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library and the LGBT Alliance of the Jewish Community Federation.