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Peter Hujar (1934 - 1987)
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| Peter
Hujar : A Retrospective by
Peter Hujar, Hripsime Visser (Contributor), Urs Stahel,
Max Kozloff
Although many still don't know it: Peter Hujar
is one of the masters of photography. Hujar was born in 1934 in
Trenton, NJ. In 1946 he moved to Manhattan and became a
photographer working for magazines, advertising, and the fashion
industry. At the end of the 1960's he opened his own studio and
ever more radically developed his own approach to photography. In
1987 Peter Hujar died of AIDS.
Hujar was mainly a portrait photographer-even when he took to
pictures of geese, dogs, or cows he would render them as unique
beings, as dignified individuals. Mostly, however, he photographed
the celebrities and denizens of Downtown New York in the 1970's
and 1980's-his boyfriend David Wojnarowicz, Candy Darling, Susan
Sontag, W. S. Burroughs, Divine, Charles Ludlam, founder of The
Theater of the Ridiculous and many legendary drag performers, like
Ethyl Eichelberger, John Heys. His black and white photographs are
singularly pure, reduced to the essence of the sitters, elegantly
capturing their style, presence, and poise.
This book is the first comprehensive monograph on Hujar's work. It
features essays by Max Kozloff, Hripsimé Visser, and Stephen
Koch. They are accompanied by recollections by some of Hujar's
friends and admirers-Nan Goldin, John Heys, Fran Lebowitz, and
many others. The book is an introduction to the work of a truly
great artist-the Nadar of Downtown New York.
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By Stephen Koch, Double
Take Magazine
Excerpt:
The photographs of retarded and handicapped
children in this portfolio were made in 1957 and 1958 by Peter
Hujar, who was then twenty-two years old, still a kid from the
streets of New York with almost nothing going for him except his
gift. The youthful Peter Hujar was looking for the way out of his
own life as an impoverished, abused--brutalized--child...
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By Stephen Koch, Double
Take Magazine
Speaking of what may be Hujar's best-known
photograph, "Candy Darling on her Deathbed" (1973), the
philosopher and critic Arthur Danto recently wrote, "I regard
this as [Hujar's] masterpiece, and one of the truly great
photographs of the century." In 1994, the Stedelijk Museum in
Amsterdam joined the Fotomuseum in Zurich to assemble an
exhibition of 183 images which, with its catalog, Peter Hujar: A
Retrospective (Scalo), made it possible to see Hujar for the first
time in his wide--his classic--range: his graphic, lonely nudes;
his pictures of animals, themselves almost portraits; his fashion,
his mock-fashion; his erotica; his street people; the mingled
squalor and polish of transvestitism...
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This site hosts two photographs.
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
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