Sergio Quirós
Hudson River (for Peter Hujar), No.1
"Between 1975 and 1976, American photographer Peter Hujar created a series of photographs titled “Hudson River” (and variants). This work is notable not only for its artistic representation of the iconic landmark, but also because of its physical connection to arguably Hujar’s most acclaimed body of work, his pictures of the gay cruising happening every day at the Hudson River piers.
For the New York City gay community, 1976 was still a far cry from the devastation that the AIDS epidemic would unleash in the 1980s and 1990s. Hujar himself succumbed to the virus in 1987.
It's 2026, and I now live in the neighborhood of Chelsea, in Manhattan, two blocks away from the Hudson River and just a short walk from where Hujar took his famous photos around fifty years ago. The sunsets over New Jersey can often be quite fiery, full of melancholy and heartbreaking colors. Whenever I'm there seeing the light of day fade over the water, I think of Peter Hujar; I consider how things have changed in the last five decades for gay men like us, yet how strange that my life today is not that different from his back then."
Hudson River (for Peter Hujar), a 2025 series of five photographs by visual artist, Sergio Quirós, is an homage to the famous New York City photographer’s 1975-1976 black-and-white body of work: Hudson River. It shows the iconic fluvial landmark during sunset carrying in its waters a mysterious, looming red presence floating underwater.
