#Photography

Peter Hujar

(1934-1987)

Peter Hujar died in 1987, leaving behind a complex and profound body of photographs.
Hujar was a leading figure in the group of artists, musicians, writers, and performers at the forefront of the cultural scene in downtown New York in the 1970s and early 80s, and he was enormously admired for his completely uncompromising attitude towards work and life.
He was a consummate technician, and his portraits of people, animals, and landscapes, with their exquisite black-and-white tonalities, were extremely influential. Highly emotional yet stripped of excess, Hujar’s photographs are always beautiful, although rarely in a conventional way. 
His extraordinary first book, Portraits in Life and Death, with an introduction by Susan Sontag, was published in 1976, but his “difficult” personality and refusal to pander to the marketplace insured that it was his last publication during his lifetime.

 + peterhujararchive.com

All the images courtesy of the Peter Hujar Archive

Self-Portrait Smoking, 1958

Candy Darling on Her Deathbed, 1973

Divine, 1975

Susan Sontag, 1975

West Side High Rise, 1976

H.M. Koutoukas, 1979

David Wojnarowicz Reclining (II), 1981

Chloe Finch, 1981

Hudson River, 1975