Photographers - Part 16

Peter Hujar

Born in 1934, child of a single mom, Peter Hujar left home at age 16 to live on his own.  In high school, a teacher observed that he was only interested in photography.

In 1967, a turning point in his life, he was accepted into a Masters Workshop with photographer Richard Avedon, based on his application, a series of nude self-portraits, one of which is above.

Mark Alice Durant wrote in an article in Photograph magazine: "If asked to name a New York photographer in the 1970s and ‘80s, who employed a medium-format camera to make elegant black-and-white portraits and homoerotic figure studies, more than likely you would think of Robert Mapplethorpe. … Yet Peter Hujar was there first. … Hujar and Mapplethorpe inevitably knew each other and everyone in the downtown scene, it seems, knew them."

Above: Rene Ricard, 1978.

The photo above is part of a triptych called Bruce de Sainte Croix, 1979.  Porn?  If so, it's high-class porn.  The Pace-MacGill Gallery valued it at $15,000-$20,000.

Not all of Hujar's work was male nudes.  He also photographed animals and many artists and writers, including William S. Burroughs, Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol and Fran Lebowitz.  But many of his photos are male nudes.  Above: Boy Blowing Spit Bubble, 1979.

Gary in Contortion, 1979.

Seated Nude (Keith Cameron), 1981

Self-Portrait in the Baths, 1979.  Like many gay men of that time, Hujar came down with AIDS.  He died of AIDS-related illness in 1987, age 53.  At the end, he predicted he would become famous after his death, like so many artists.

Self-portrait ejaculating, from the posthumous 2002 book of his photos Animals and Nudes.  

In 2011 the Metropolitan Museum did an exhibition Night Vision: Photography After Dark that included his photos.  Suddenly, galleries and museums acknowledged him.  True to his prediction, he is now recognized as a major photographer of the late 20th century.

Note: my friend Jerry posted about Peter Hujar on Jan. 23, showing a different selection of photos.  You can see it on his blog by clicking here: Vintage Muscle Men.