Guy Hayes photo collection

Guy Hayes was a professional freelance photographer from 1944 – 1983. He graduated from Clarkston High School and served in the Navy during World War II. After the war, he settled in Avondale Estates. Hayes was a regular contributor to The Atlanta Journal, The Atlanta Constitution and The DeKalb News/Sun. Over 14,000 of his original negatives were donated to the History Center in 1984, covering mostly the 1950s-1960s. Although very little documentation accompanied this collection, Hayes’ artistic work reveals a prolific talent with an incisive eye. Hayes’ work included current events or staged shoots to illustrate stories as requested by these newspapers. This resulted in a lack of diversity of the Georgians represented during these decades. As Georgia was segregated in its public arenas, so too were its newspapers and their readers.

DeKalb History Center created an exhibit of his work, on display from May 2012 to November 2016. In 2024, we added some of the images here. Some of the images have been identified and you can click on them to read more. Otherwise, we are working to identify the remainder of the images.