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Peter Hujar

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Peter Hujar
Self-Portrait Standing (1980), book cover for Love & Lust
BornOctober 11, 1934
Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.
DiedNovember 26, 1987(1987-11-26) (aged 53)
New York City, U.S.
Resting placeGate of Heaven Cemetery
Known forBlack & white portrait photography
Websitepeterhujararchive.com

Peter Hujar (/ˈhuːdʒɑːr/;[1] October 11, 1934 – November 26, 1987) was an American photographer best known for his black-and-white portraits.[2][3][4][5] Hujar's work received only marginal public recognition during his lifetime,[5] but he has since been recognized as a major American photographer of the 1970s and 80s.[2][3]

Early life

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Hujar was born on October 11, 1934, in Trenton, New Jersey, to Rose Murphy, a waitress, who was abandoned by her husband during her pregnancy. He was raised by his Ukrainian grandparents on their farm, where he spoke only Ukrainian until he started school. He remained on the farm until his grandmother's death in 1946, and his mother took him to New York City to live with her and her second husband in their one-room appartement.[6][7] The household was abusive, and in 1950, when Hujar was 16, he left home and began to live independently.[7]

Education

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Hujar received his first camera in 1947[8] and in 1953 entered the School of Industrial Art where he expressed interest in being a photographer. He encountered an encouraging teacher, the poet Daisy Aldan (1923–2001), and following her advice he became a commercial photography apprentice.Ref? Apart from classes in photography during high school, Hujar's photographic education and technical mastery was acquired in commercial photo studios, where he could use the darkroom during afterhours. By 1957, when he was age 23 he was making photographs now considered to be of museum quality. Early in 1967, he was one of a select group of young photographers in a master class taught by Richard Avedon and Marvin Israel, where he met Alexey Brodovitch and Diane Arbus.[7]

Artistic career

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In 1958, Hujar accompanied the artist Joseph Raffael on a Fulbright to Italy. In 1963, he secured his own Fulbright and returned to Italy with Paul Thek, where they explored and photographed the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, images of the dead featured opposite his portraits in the book Portraits in Life and Death. Published in 1975 by Da Capo Press with a foreword by Susan Sontag, it remained his only comprehensive work, except for a handful of solo exhibitions in galleries during his lifetime.[6]

In 1964, Hujar returned to America and became a chief assistant in the studio of the commercial photographer Harold Krieger. Around this time, he met Andy Warhol, posed for four of Warhol's three-minute Screen Tests and was included in the compilation film The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys that was assembled from Screen Tests.

Hujar quit his job in commercial photography in 1967, and at great financial sacrifice, began to pursue primarily his own art work that reflected his homosexual milieu. He was an influential artist-activist of the gay liberation movement; in 1969, with his lover, the political activist Jim Fouratt, he witnessed the Stonewall riots in the West Village. Also at the urging of Fouratt, he took the now somewhat ironic photo "Come out!!" for the Gay Liberation Front, or GLF, but it was the extent of his involvement with the group.[9] In 1973, he moved into a loft above The Eden Theater at 189 2nd Avenue in the East Village, where he lived for the rest of his life.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s he frequented the bohemian art world of downtown Manhattan, shooting portraits of the artists there such as drag queen actor Divine and writers, such as Susan Sontag, William Burroughs, Fran Lebowitz, and Vince Aletti. He visited "extremely serious, very heavy S&M bars" and the abandoned West Side Hudson River piers where men cruised for sex.[5] In 1975, Hujar published Portraits in Life and Death, with an introduction by Sontag. After a tepid reception, the book became a classic in American photography. The rest of the 1970s was a period of prolific work. In early 1981, Hujar met the writer, filmmaker, and artist David Wojnarowicz, and after a brief period as Hujar's lover, Wojnarowicz became a protégé linked to Hujar for the remainder of the photographer's life. Hujar remained instrumental in all phases of Wojnarowicz's emergence as an important young artist.[10]

Another artist closely linked with Hujar is Robert Mapplethorpe. Both artists were gay white men who excelled at portrait photography and who made unashamedly homoerotic work that walked the line between pornography and fine art, but they were structural opposites. If Mapplethorpe reduced his subjects to abstract forms, his sitter’s faces to masks, his nude models to sculptures, then Hujar emphasized his sitters' idiosyncrasies, their irreducible qualities, their human sentience over their fleshy geometry.[11] "Orgasmic Man", one of Hujar's more memorable works, is also a key difference between his work and Mapplethorpe’s; never once, in all of Mapplethorpe’s editioned photographs, did he show orgasm or ejaculation nor did he depict the concomitant facial expressions.

Hujar had a wide array of subjects in his photography, including cityscapes and urban still lifes, animals, nudes, abandoned buildings, and European ruins. His photography, which was mostly in black and white, has been described as conveying an intimacy, suggestive of both love and loss.[12] One aspect of this intimate quality was Hujar's ability to connect with his sitters. One of his models was quoted after an unsuccessful session as saying:

"We couldn't ‘reveal.’ As an actor you have to reveal. And Hujar's big thing was that you had to reveal. I know that now, but I didn't know it at the time. In other words, blistering, blazing honesty directed towards the lens. No pissing about. No posing. No putting anything on. No camping around. Just flat, real who-you-are...You must strip down all the nonsense until you get to the bone. That's what Peter wanted and that was his great, great talent and skill."[9]

Hujar's portraits, the subject of the first half of the one book he published while he was alive, are simple; he almost never used props and the focus of his work was on the sitter as opposed to the backdrop of the shot. Usually, his subjects either were sitting or posing in a recumbent way.[13]

Death and legacy

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In January 1987, Hujar was diagnosed with AIDS. He died 10 months later, aged 53, on November 25 at Cabrini Medical Center in New York.[14] His funeral was held at Church of St. Joseph in Greenwich Village, and he was buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.[15]

Hujar willed his estate to his lifelong friend Stephen Koch, who administers it since (today as Peter Hujar Archive).[3] A first retrospective of Hujar's work in collaboration with the estate was shown two years after his death at the Grey Art Gallery & Study Center of New York University. It was followed by a more comprehensive show in 1994 by a joined effort of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Netherlands) and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. In 2013 the Morgan Library & Museum in New York aquired a hundred prints and the entirety of his written estate and all contact sheets from the Peter Hujar Archive. A collaboration between the Morgan Library and the Spanish Mapfre Foundation enabled a major travelling retrospective exhibition that was accompanied by a comprehensive monograph published in conjunction with Aperture in 2017.

Publications

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  • Peter Hujar. Portraits in Life and Death. New York: Da Capo, 1976, ISBN 0-306-70755-1, ISBN 0-306-80038-1. Introduction by Susan Sontag.[16]
    • Reissue: New York: W. W. Norton, 2024, ISBN 978-1-324-09217-9. Foreword by Benjamin Moser.
  • Peter Weiermair (ed.). Peter Hujar. Innsbruck, Austria: Allerheiligenpresse, 1981. Contributions by Jean-Christophe Ammann and Dieter Hall.
  • Peter Hujar. New York: Grey Art Gallery & Study Center, New York University, 1990, ISBN 0-934349-07-X. Texts by Stephen Koch and Thomas Sokolowski, interviews by Fran Lebowitz and Vince Aletti.
  • Urs Stahel, Hripsimé Visser (eds.). Peter Hujar: A Retrospective. Zurich, Switzerland: Scalo, 1994, ISBN 1-881616-35-5. Foreword by Urs Stahel, texts by Hripsimé Visser, Max Kozloff, and Stephen Koch; mementos by Jean-Christophe Amann, Nan Goldin, Marvin Heiferman, John Heys, Fran Lebowitz a. o.
  • Klaus Kertess. Peter Hujar: Animals and Nudes. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Twin Palms, 2002, ISBN 0-944092-95-0.
  • Peter Hujar: Lost Downtown. New York: Pace/MacGill Gallery; Göttingen: Steidl, 2016, ISBN : 978-3-95829-106-5. Text by Vince Aletti.
  • Peter Hujar – Speed of Life. Madrid: Fundación Mapfre; New York: Aperture, 2017, ISBN 978-1-59711-414-1; original Spanish edition: A la velocidad de la vida, ISBN 978-84-9844-608-1; paperback edition in French, 2019, ISBN 978-2-915704-89-1. Contributions by Philip Gefter, Joel Smith, Steve Turtell and Martha Scott Burton.
  • Peter Hujar: Rialto, Rodovid Press 2024, ISBN 978-617-7482-65-8.

Further reading

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  • Mary-Kay Lombino.Subterranean Monuments: Burckhardt, Johnson, Hujar (exhibtion magazine). Poughkeepsie, NY: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, 2006.
  • Lorenzo Fusi. Changing Difference: Queer Politics and Shifting Identities: Peter Hujar, Mark Morrisroe, Jack Smith (exhibition catalogue). Milan, Italy: Silvana, 2013, ISBN 978-88-366-2506-2.

Exhibitions

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This list follows the comprehensive compilation of the exhibitions of Hujar's work until 2017 provided by Joel Smith in the Mapfre/Aperture monograph Speed of Life. All solo exhibitions in his lifetime are named here, while most group shows were omitted.[17]

  • 1974: as part of Recent Acquisitions, Floating Foundation of Photography, New York
  • 1975: Portfolio by Peter Hujar, Foto Gallery, New York[18]
  • 1977: Portraits in Life and Death, Marcuse Pfeifer Gallery, New York
  • 1977: Catskill Center for Photography, Woodstock, New York
  • 1978: Peter Hujar: Photographs, Port Washington Public Library, New York
  • 1979: Peter Hujar: Recent Photographs, Marcuse Pfeifer Gallery, New York
  • 1980: La Remise du Parc, Paris, France
  • 1981: Peter Hujar: Recent Photographs, Robert Samuel Gallery, New York
  • 1982: Larry Clark / Peter Hujar, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany (catalogue), expanded to
    • Peter Hujar / Larry Clark / Robert Mapplethorpe, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland
  • 1982: Galerie Jurka, Amsterdam, the Netherlands[18]
  • 1982: Galerie Nagel, Berlin, Germany[18]
  • 1983: Forum Stadtpark, Graz, and Modern Art Galerie, Vienna, Austria
  • 1986: Peter Hujar: Recent Photographs, Gracie Mansion Gallery, New York

Posthumous exhibitions

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After his death several commercial galleries showed his work in (solo) exhibitions, like James Danziger (1991, 1992, 1998), Paula Cooper (1993, 2002), Wessel and O'Connor (1998), all situated in New York, Stephen Daiter in Chicago, Yezerski in Boston, and Berinson in Berlin (all three in 1999), Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels (1996), Renée Ziegler (1990) and Mai 36 (2002, 2010) in Zurich, and Maureen Paley and Marietta Neuss in London (both 2008). Closely engaged with the Peter Hujar Archive since the 2000s and regularly arranging shows of Hujar's work are Matthew Marks (first in 2000) and Pace/MacGill (since 2013) in New York, and the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco (since 2002). Listed here are just the gallery shows which were accompanied by a catalogue, in addition to all solo shows in public institutions.[17]

Collections

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Hujar's work is held in the following collections (a. o.):
USA

UK and Europe

References

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  1. ^ "Say How: H". National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. Retrieved October 24, 2023.
  2. ^ a b c Cotter, Holland (February 8, 2018). "He Made Them Glow: A Maverick's Portraits Live On". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 15, 2019.
  3. ^ a b c Schjeldahl, Peter (January 29, 2018). "The Bohemian Rhapsody of Peter Hujar". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved December 15, 2019.
  4. ^ Symonds, Alexandria (February 2, 2016). "The Most Exacting Photographer in Downtown '70s New York". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 15, 2019.
  5. ^ a b c Bowcock, Simon (October 14, 2016). "Peter Hujar: The Photographer Who Defined Downtown New York". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved December 15, 2019.
  6. ^ a b Smith, Joel (2017). "A Gorgeous Mental Discretion". Peter Hujar – Speed of Life. Madrid and New York: Fundación Mapfre and Aperture. p. 13f. ISBN 978-1-59711-414-1.
  7. ^ a b c Carr, Cynthia (2012). Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz. New York: Bloomsbury. p. 181. ISBN 978-1-59691-533-6.
  8. ^ "Peter Hujar". Maureen Paley (press release). Archived from the original on November 4, 2014. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
  9. ^ a b Adams, Harrison (2021). "Peter Hujar: Shamelessness Without Shame". Criticism. 63 (4): 319. doi:10.13110/criticism.63.4.0319. ISSN 0011-1589. S2CID 245138589.
  10. ^ Carr, Cynthia (2012). Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz. New York: Bloomsbury. p. 182. ISBN 978-1-59691-533-6.
  11. ^ Adams, Harrison. Photography in the First Person: Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin and Sally Mann (Dissertation). Yale University, 2018.
  12. ^ Jones, Louis B. "His Queer Shoulder". The Threepenny Review, vol. 145, 2016, pp. 6–9. Accessed 15 May 2022.
  13. ^ Hujar, Peter; Sontag, Susan (1976). Portraits in Life and Death. Da Capo Press. OCLC 1074015771.
  14. ^ "Peter Hujar Dies at 53; Made Photo Portraits". The New York Times. November 28, 1987.
  15. ^ Carr, Cynthia (2012). Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz. New York: Bloomsbury. p. 379. ISBN 978-1-59691-533-6.
  16. ^ Portraits in Life and Death digitized at Archive.org, but not to be borrowed. Retrieved October 9, 2024.
  17. ^ a b Joel Smith with Martha Scott Burton (2017), "Exhibitions and Bibliography", Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, Madrid and New York: Fundación Mapfre and Aperture, pp. 239–241
  18. ^ a b c According to a listing compiled by the Fraenkel Gallery and provided as a Pdf. Retrieved October 9, 2024.
  19. ^ [https://www.kunstmuseum.de/en/exhibition/peter-hujar-eine-anmut-von-leben-und-tod-fotografien-von-1963-1985/ Peter Hujar Eine Anmut von Leben und Tod. Fotografien von 1963–1985. 18. 2. – 23. 4. 1995] at the museum's website. Retrieved October 9, 2024.
  20. ^ "Peter Hujar". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  21. ^ Pitman, Joanna. "Peter Hujar's Love for the Lonely". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  22. ^ "Peter Hujar". Institute of Contemporary Arts. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  23. ^ "Peter Hujar photography exhibition". Fundación MAPFRE. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  24. ^ "Peter Hujar". Fotomuseumdenhaag.nl. May 8, 2017. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  25. ^ "Peter Hujar: Speed of Life". bampfa.org. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  26. ^ "Peter Hujar: Speed of Life". Wexner Center for the Arts. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  27. ^ "Top 10 photography shows of 2019". The Guardian. December 16, 2019. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  28. ^ Manning, Emily (January 25, 2017). "inside the first major retrospective of peter hujar's evocative portraits". i-d. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
  29. ^ Silver, Hannah (May 25, 2024). "A Snapshot of the Bohemian Downtown: Peter Hujar's Early Photography on Show in New York". Wallpaper.com (Features). Retrieved September 30, 2024.
  30. ^ "Peter Hujar: Portraits in Life and Death – Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà, Calle della Pietà, Castello 3703)" (pdf). Peter Hujar Archive (Press release). Retrieved October 9, 2024.
  31. ^ "Peter Hujar: Speed of Life". The Morgan Library & Museum. January 11, 2017.
  32. ^ "Peter Hujar | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art.
  33. ^ "Peter Hujar". Whitney.org.
  34. ^ "Peter Hujar". The Art Institute of Chicago.
  35. ^ "CMOA Collection". Collection.cmoa.org.
  36. ^ "Harvard Art Museums". Harvardartmuseums.org.
  37. ^ "Peter Hujar (American, 1934 - 1987) (Getty Museum)". The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles.
  38. ^ "Works – Peter Hujar – Artists/Makers – The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art". Art.nelson-atkins.org.
  39. ^ "Candy Darling on Her Deathbed". SLAM.org.
  40. ^ "Peter Hujar". SFMOMA.org.
  41. ^ "Peter Hujar". Walkerart.org.
  42. ^ "Untitled | Yale University Art Gallery". Artgallery.yale.edu.
  43. ^ "Peter Hujar". Stedelijk.nl.
  44. ^ "Peter Hujar 1934–1987". Tate. Retrieved May 30, 2021.
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