Highlights From the Guy Hayes Collection: Food, Fun & Fashion in the Modern Era

This exhibit showcased a small selection of black and white photographs from the Hayes collection and provided a unique view of food trends, clothing styles and recreational diversions of the 1950s and 1960s. 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 11,000 of his original negatives were donated to the History Center in 1984. 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. (May 2012 – November 2016)