By 1972, he began to photograph, 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.

In the beginning years of his career, Giard did much of his landscape photography during the late autumn, winter, and early spring when many of the fashionable houses of the Hamptons were boarded up for the season.

In 1985, after seeing a performance of Larry Kramer¹s The Normal Heart dealing with the crisis of AIDS, Giard set about documenting in straightforward, unadorned, yet sometimes witty and playful portraits, a wide survey of significant gay and lesbian literary lights.

Grants supported research and artistic projects, as well as efforts to alleviate social, economic, and medical problems for women in a given locality.

The annual Robert Giard Fellowship is a $10,000 grant to visual artists whose work addresses sexuality, gender, and issues of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender identity.