{{Infobox person
| name= Guy Gillette
(Photographer American photographer of the second half of the 20th century| image=Photographer Guy Gillette.jpg
| nationality=[[United States|American]]
| birth_date=October 22, 1922
| birth_place=[[Minneapolis]], [[Minnesota]], USA
Resident of [[New York City]]<br>
Visitor to Houston County, [[Texas]](wife's family ranch)
| death_date=August 19, 2013 (aged 90)
| spouse=Doris Porter Gillette (married 1942-20121942–2012, her death)<br>
'''Children''':<br>
Guy Porter Gillette (deceased)<br>
'''Guy Gillette''' (October 22, 1922 – August 19, 2013) was an [[United States|American]] [[photographer]] of the second half of the 20th century whose work attracted national attention beginning with the 1955 exhibit ''The Family of Man'' at the Museum of Modern Art in [[New York City]].<ref name=spegues/>
Gillette's prints appeared in such magazines as ''[[Life Magazine|Life]],'' ''Fortune,'' and ''Harper's Bazaar'' and in ''[[The New York Times]].'' He photographed such celebrities as [[Elvis Presley]], Audrey Hepburn, [[Elizabeth II]], Agnes de Mille, Sarah Vaughan, Marian Anderson, and [[Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis]].
==Background==
Though he was often called Guy Gillette, "Sr.," his son was Guy Porter Gillette (1945-20131945–2013), with the maiden name of his mother and not Guy, Jr., as he was sometimes called for the sake of convenience.</ref> Gillette was born in [[Minneapolis]], [[Minnesota]], and traveled about as a youth because of his father's occupation. While working employed at a restaurant in New York City, Gillette met Doris Porter of Lovelady in Houston County, [[Texas]], not to be confused with the city of [[Houston, Texas|Houston]] in Harris County. She was the daughter of V. H. "Hoyt" and Lucy Porter. She had come to New York City to study fashion design.<ref name=spegues/><ref name=hchronicle>{{cite web|url=http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/columnists/native-texan/article/Rancher-keeps-blues-music-Crockett-thumping-at-5238982.php|title=Rancher keeps blues music, Crockett thumping at café|publisher=''The Houston Chronicle|author=Joe Holley|date=February 15, 2014|accessdate=June 7, 2020}}</ref>
==Career==
In 2013, Andy Wilkinson of [[Lubbock]], Texas, published through the [[University of Oklahoma]] Press a coffee-table book, ''A Family of the Land: The Texas Photography of Guy Gillette,'' a photo-account of Gillette's career. Gillette saw an advanced copy of the book but died before publication.<ref name=spegues/> This book is based on pictures that Gillette took dating back to the 1940s at the Porter Place, the ranch of his father-in-law located near Crockett in Houston County in East Texas.<ref name=gallery/> The ranch is situated in the westernmost part of the Deep South as the land begins a slow transformation into the more rugged West Texas terrain. The pictures document ranching, family, and small-town life, including downtown activities on Saturdays: the café, drug store, [[barber]]shop, city streets, and marching band and [[Sunday]] church matters: homecoming, dinner on the ground, and Bible school.<ref name=review>Billy Hathorn, Review of ''A Family of the Land: The Texas Photography of Guy Gillette'' by Andy Wilkinson (Norman: [[University of Oklahoma]] Press, 2013, 131 pp.) in ''West Texas Historical Review,'' Vol. 90 (2014), pp. 156-157.</ref>
These early photographs provided Gillette with an opening in New York, where he had been an aspiring [[actor]], having studied under Michael Chekhov, a [[Russia]]n-American theatre practitioner. Gillette was in several [[Broadway]] plays while the family lived in the borough of [[Staten Island]] and also in Yonkers, [[New York]].<ref name=spegues>{{cite web|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304035926/http://www.messenger-news.com/pip-gillette-remembers-late-father-guy-sr/|title=Pip Gillette Remembers Late Father, Guy (Sr.)|publisher=''The Messenger''|location=Houston County, Texas|author=Sarah Pegues|date=March 4, 2016|accessdate=June 7, 2020}}</ref> Instead he became a well-known photo-journalist who recorded on camera some now old-time celebrities as well as the [[civil rights]] movement and the leftist activists opposing the [[Vietnam War]]. He took the view that "a true photograph tells a true story".<ref>''A Family of the Land,'' p. 91.</ref>
Though he had to borrow the money to buy a good camera, his work soon found its way into the national arena. Several photographs in the volume stand out, such as five pictures of a wounded cow-dog named "Red" and a successful trip to the [[veterinarian]]. Wilkinson stresses how ranchers became necessarily attached to such multipurpose animals. Gillette's older son, Guy Porter Gillette, who was born in Crockett and spent his later years there, is shown stroking Red's head as they await medical care. This particular print was said to have been the only photograph to "move to tears"<ref>''A Family of the Land'', pp. 44-45.</ref> Edward Steichen, the curator of the Museum of Modern Art.<ref name=review/>
==References==
{{reflist}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Gillette, Guy (photographer)}}[[Category:Photographers]]
[[Category:Minnesota]]
[[Category:New York City]]
[[Category:Texas]]
[[Category:United States Army]]
[[Category:World War II]]