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Peter Hujar: Speed of Life

By Peggy Roalf   Thursday January 25, 2018

Peter Hujar was a leading figure of the downtown New York scene of the 1970s and ’80s. He is most well-known for his portraits of New York City’s artists, musicians, writers, and performers, featuring personalities such as Susan Sontag, William S. Burroughs, Fran Lebowitz, David Wojnarowicz, Andy Warhol, Candy Darling, and Ethyl Eachelberger who populated the large gay-disco-drag performance-cruising underground life that has since vanished.Above: © Lynne Davis, Peter Hujar, New York 1980

Deeply admired for his commitment to his craft and his subjects, Hujar was nevertheless not commercially successful during his lifetime. In fact he lived in extreme poverty in a $200-a-month illegal loft. Hujar died of AID Sat age 56 in 1987, leaving behind a complex and profound body of work that has gradually found new audiences, with major exhibitions and books released during the last several years.

Left: John Heys in Lana Turner’s Gown (I) 1979. Right: Fran Lebowitz at Home in Morristown 1974. Both photographs: © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Now a major retrospective, Speed of Life, is on view at the Morgan Library & Museum. Drawn from the extensive holdings of his work at the Morgan and from nine other collections, the show and its catalog follow Hujar from his beginnings in the mid-1950s to his central role in the East Village art scene three decades later.

Curator Joel Smith said, “Hujar chronicled the public unfolding of gay life of the 1970s. He left magazine work in order to focus on what he cared about, above all the creative life all around him in the East Village. Everything he photographed he wanted to bring across with clarity, empathy, and respect for the life behind the mask. He wrote, ‘I make uncomplicated direct photographs of complicated and difficult subjects. I photograph those who push themselves to extremes and people who claim the freedom to be themselves.’”

Left: Candy Darling on her Deathbed, 1973. Right: Gary Schneider in Contortion (2), 1979. Both images, © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Speed of Life, is on view through May 20 at the Morgan Library & Museum. 225 Madison Avenue, NY, NY Info The catalogue features full-page reproductions of all 160 works in the exhibition, essays by curator Joel Smith, Philip Gefter, and Steve Turtell, and the first fully researched chronology, exhibition history, and bibliography to be published on Hujar.

Among the public programs is An Evening with Fran Lebowitz: On Peter Hujar, Thursday, February 8, 6:30 pm. Info CV19.EX.PHOTO 


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