Guy Gillette

Guy Gillette (1920–2010) was an American photojournalist whose six‑decade career chronicled the evolving face of postwar America. Born and raised in Chicago, he took up photography as a teenager, apprenticing with local news outlets before joining Life magazine as a staff photographer in 1943. Over the next fifty years he worked for Fortune, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, and countless other publications, earning a reputation for his ability to move effortlessly between high‑profile assignments and grassroots reportage.

Gillette’s portraiture captured some of the century’s most iconic figures. He photographed Jacqueline Kennedy mid‑farewell wave, framed Elvis Presley in a rare moment of introspection, and recorded Audrey Hepburn in couture-filled stills that appeared in Harper’s Bazaar. Commissioned by Fortune, he shot candid corporate profiles—CEOs in boardrooms, innovators at work—which helped redefine business photography as a genre of its own.

A gifted storyteller, Gillette also produced powerful documentary essays on pivotal events: the desolate aftermath of the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, the rise of the Civil Rights Movement in the American South, and the cultural ferment of 1960s New York. His work was selected by Edward Steichen for MoMA’s landmark The Family of Man exhibition in 1955, placing him among the generation of photographers who believed in the medium’s power to unite disparate communities.

Even after formal retirement, Gillette continued to teach master‑classes at the International Center of Photography and mentor emerging documentary photographers. His archive—held in private collections and periodically exhibited—remains a touchstone for anyone seeking to understand how one camera, wielded with both empathy and precision, can capture the sweeping currents of history in a single frame.