Peter Hujar — À propos — Slash Paris

Born in 1934 in a modest family, Peter Hujar started photographing at the age of 11 with his “brick”, a large 35-millimeter camera. That same year, he moved to New York, where he stayed for the rest of his life, in Downtown Manhattan. He studied at the High School of Art and Design, then made his mark in the world of fashion and advertising. But their tumult bothers him. “It wasn’t for me.” The man then prefers to do odd jobs to develop his art in parallel.

Like Warhol or Mapplethorpe, this night owl is fully involved in the avant-garde. He rarely misses the opportunity to attend screenings or shows, and rubs shoulders with Andy Warhol’s Factory (he appears in his Screen Tests), the legendary Max Kansas City club, the Judson Dance Theater… But, in his work, there is no clear record of this agitation or of Factory under narcotic. Peter Hujar is the New York of the night after night, a New York in after time where, after partying, you find yourself with yourself and in silence.

Peter Hujar photographs most of his models at home, outside of this hectic urban life, on a simple chair or in an elongated position. The artist excels when the bodies relax and he draws his most beautiful shots.

After graduating from high school in 1953, and until 1968, Hujar worked as an assistant to various advertising photographers. Five years of collaborating with consumer magazines convinced him that a career as a fashion photographer “is not for [him].” In 1973, he preferred to lead an “artist’s life”, which allowed him greater freedom in his work as a photographer. In the loft-studio he occupies above a theatre in the East Village (south of Manhattan), Hujar focuses his lens on those who follow their creative instincts and refuse easy success. Of his photographs, he said they are “simple and direct images of difficult and complicated subjects”; they immortalize moments, beings and cultural practices whose existence is as fleeting as that of life.

In 1981, Hujar had a brief affair with the young artist David Wojnarowicz, with whom he toured the dilapidated neighbourhoods of New York. The city he photographed at that time is a small, vibrant world of intense creative energy that has since disappeared. Peter Hujar died in November 1987 of AIDS-related pneumonia leaving behind a complex and profound body of photographs. He was admired for his uncompromising attitude through work as well as life.

Since his death, Peter Hujar’s work has been acquired and exhibited in many major museums in the United States, Japan and Europe. The importance of his work was not recognized until after his death. In 2017, a major retrospective of it, originally organized by the Morgan Library in New York and has toured extensively in Europe and America, where it has been widely and enthusiastically admired by the public and critics alike. Peter Hujar is now considered one of the greatest American photographers.