He took photographs in the 1940s at the Porter Place, the ranch his future in-laws owned near Crockett in East Texas, documenting cattle farming, the family, and small-town life.
[6] Edward Steichen included his image of a father and two sons sitting at the counter in Arnold's Café, Lovelady, Texas in the Museum of Modern Art's world-touring 1955 exhibition, The Family of Man which was seen by 10 million visitors.
[12] In 1957, Jacob Deschin, camera editor of The New York Times, remarked that Gillette's "pictures were made with conviction.
[14][15] In the course of his magazine photography Gillette photographed Elvis Presley, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth II, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Agnes de Mille, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Sarah Vaughan, Johnny Cash,[16] Jacqueline Susann, Marian Anderson, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
He saw an advance copy of the book, A Family of the Land: The Texas Photography of Guy Gillette,[17] published through the University of Oklahoma Press, but died before its publication.