The gallery is very happy to present this remarkable exhibition of vintage photographs by Peter Hujar. This marks Hujar’s third one-person show at the gallery, in addition to numerous appearances in curated exhibitions over the years.
In the 1960’s, Hujar pursued working as a commercial photographer in addition to making prints of his own. He was chosen as part of a very select group of young photographers to take a master class with Richard Avedon, where he met Diane Arbus, and other major photographers of the time. Breaking out on his own as a photographer in 1967, he quickly developed a reputation as a non-compromising singular artist, much involved with the emerging LGBTQ scene in the city. In 1970 his iconic photograph of people in the street was used as the poster for the newly formed Gay Liberation Front.
Hujar was an important figure in the downtown New York art scene of the 1970’s and 80’s, hanging out with, and photographing many iconic personalities of that time and place. It was a heady time of experimentation and exploration and artistic expression. It was a world of hustlers, drag queens, easily available anonymous sex, leather bars, cutting edge theater productions and of course, the clubs. This was his world, and it provided him a wealth of material to photograph.
Out of this tumultuous world Hujar made a number of important relationships, perhaps none as well known or important as his friendship and romantic relationship with David Wojnarowicz.
Hujar was known for his intense connections to his sitters or subjects, whether they were performers, writers, babies or horses. As opposed to another famous photographer of that same time, Robert Mapplethorpe, Hujar insisted on developing and printing all his own photographs. He would not seek to make each print look the same, but rather they were produced according to his feeling or state of mind at that time. There is a richness to his printing that is quite remarkable.
All of the work in this exhibition are gelatin silver prints that he printed himself. A number of the images are examples of rarely seen work.
Peter Hujar was born in Trenton, NJ in 1934 and died from AIDS in New York City 1987. He is regarded as one of the most important American photographers. His work is in the collection of many major museums such as The Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum, and Museum of Modern Art, New York, the MFA in Boston, and countless others. A major exhibition of his work, “Speed of Life”, was held in 2018 at the Morgan Library in New York.
