Why Peter Hujar is Portraiture's Forgotten Hero
January 23, 2017 12:04 PM Subscribe
"Who? Although many would recognise the work of Peter Hujar – his famous photograph of Susan Sontag reclining, for example, or his affecting shot of transgender actress Candy Darling on her deathbed – the American photographer and his impressive legacy are frequently overlooked." Thirty years after his death, Peter Hujar is finally getting his due: a traveling retrospective, organized by the Morgan Library & Museum.
The Peter Hujar Archive
Fraenkel Gallery: Peter Hujar
Peter Hujar: the photographer who defined downtown New York
Peter Hujar's Timeless Take on the Downtown Scene
Peter Hujar and the Lost New York
The New Yorker's Vince Aletti on Hujar:
How Peter Hujar Defined Downtown
Peter Hujar's Love & Lust (video)
The Peter Hujar Archive
Fraenkel Gallery: Peter Hujar
Peter Hujar: the photographer who defined downtown New York
Peter Hujar's Timeless Take on the Downtown Scene
Peter Hujar and the Lost New York
The New Yorker's Vince Aletti on Hujar:
How Peter Hujar Defined Downtown
Peter Hujar's Love & Lust (video)
I wrote this about his love and lost catalog, which I have been thinking about since Montreal's Mapplethorpe show left me cold:
I keep thinking about hujar after seeing that mapplethorpe show, so i got an ill of his love and lust catalog. aside from a few shots that were so intimate bc of their domesticity (including a great shot of john cage) the ones that were most interesting were the photos of erotic completion. i mean completion in the sense of cum shots (see orgasm 1980), but also completion in the sense of the logical end of a queer pictorial tradition. their is a narrative--english and german and american mostly--that asked the quesiton, how do we make work neo-classical and still erotic--how little of the greek shading do we have to have, so this code can be read. it's an inside joke at this point, but it's not only gladitors--it's pictoral light and discreet shadows and a kind of diffusion of eros thru time. (it's why minor white was a great portraitist--because of his formality; and also the rship b/w ballet and keirstein/gplynnes---compare hujar's triptych of bruce de saint croix, stephen koch in his essay for this peice, plays with classicism, but it has this perfectly ambivalent ppgh: "he knew precisely what he did and did not want. the triptych must not be clinical or pyschological. the focus had to be on the body. nor could their be any slumming in pornography. The triptych must not induce arousal, erection or orgasm" Does it mean something that the dancer does not get a cumshot, does the cumshot equal slumming in pornography)...so we have mapplethorpe still playing with the signifiers of classicism (those super cheesy plinths, that direct quoting of carvaiggo) but hujar uses the lighting and the bodies in space--and he kind of just strips everything away, but it's not porn either, because of how he shoots and develops, b/c their is enough of the heritage of the form present...it's that old joke about the difference b/w porn and art being the lighting....but also maybe the bodies...but bodies that are alone--the shots are mostly masturbation, the shots with two people in a bed, are clothed and covered in blankets. the masturbation shots, seem to be another kind of reversal; for 3 or 400 years masturabation made us sicker and more narcisstic, it was a medical prroblem and a religious problem that lead to shame or exhaustion, but hujar --this was an argument that perserving ourselves was perhaps holy, that we could not cotton anymore to an abjectness of bodies, and that our bodies could not be held discreet under historical draping---the jockstrap a signal of health, the singlet not the straight boy in orgasm I, I, III from 1969, are not michalengo, and they aren't eakins--the model has buck teeth, mutton chops, wonky eye, and in the banality of detail, it is impossible to make this art but it's impossible to make this porn, and the kind of tenderness in the space that perhaps only photography can allow (alletti's tender essay about trading images in semi-public spaces is key to this)...one of the orgasm photos was used on the american hardcover of a little life, and as much as i hated that book for it's lack of abjectness, i believe hujar's kind of negotiating with a public/private intimacy that i never beleived yanaghaira was capable of...
posted by PinkMoose at 12:15 PM on January 23, 2017 [6 favorites]
I keep thinking about hujar after seeing that mapplethorpe show, so i got an ill of his love and lust catalog. aside from a few shots that were so intimate bc of their domesticity (including a great shot of john cage) the ones that were most interesting were the photos of erotic completion. i mean completion in the sense of cum shots (see orgasm 1980), but also completion in the sense of the logical end of a queer pictorial tradition. their is a narrative--english and german and american mostly--that asked the quesiton, how do we make work neo-classical and still erotic--how little of the greek shading do we have to have, so this code can be read. it's an inside joke at this point, but it's not only gladitors--it's pictoral light and discreet shadows and a kind of diffusion of eros thru time. (it's why minor white was a great portraitist--because of his formality; and also the rship b/w ballet and keirstein/gplynnes---compare hujar's triptych of bruce de saint croix, stephen koch in his essay for this peice, plays with classicism, but it has this perfectly ambivalent ppgh: "he knew precisely what he did and did not want. the triptych must not be clinical or pyschological. the focus had to be on the body. nor could their be any slumming in pornography. The triptych must not induce arousal, erection or orgasm" Does it mean something that the dancer does not get a cumshot, does the cumshot equal slumming in pornography)...so we have mapplethorpe still playing with the signifiers of classicism (those super cheesy plinths, that direct quoting of carvaiggo) but hujar uses the lighting and the bodies in space--and he kind of just strips everything away, but it's not porn either, because of how he shoots and develops, b/c their is enough of the heritage of the form present...it's that old joke about the difference b/w porn and art being the lighting....but also maybe the bodies...but bodies that are alone--the shots are mostly masturbation, the shots with two people in a bed, are clothed and covered in blankets. the masturbation shots, seem to be another kind of reversal; for 3 or 400 years masturabation made us sicker and more narcisstic, it was a medical prroblem and a religious problem that lead to shame or exhaustion, but hujar --this was an argument that perserving ourselves was perhaps holy, that we could not cotton anymore to an abjectness of bodies, and that our bodies could not be held discreet under historical draping---the jockstrap a signal of health, the singlet not the straight boy in orgasm I, I, III from 1969, are not michalengo, and they aren't eakins--the model has buck teeth, mutton chops, wonky eye, and in the banality of detail, it is impossible to make this art but it's impossible to make this porn, and the kind of tenderness in the space that perhaps only photography can allow (alletti's tender essay about trading images in semi-public spaces is key to this)...one of the orgasm photos was used on the american hardcover of a little life, and as much as i hated that book for it's lack of abjectness, i believe hujar's kind of negotiating with a public/private intimacy that i never beleived yanaghaira was capable of...
posted by PinkMoose at 12:15 PM on January 23, 2017 [6 favorites]
Is he forgotten though? He casts a huge shadow.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 12:48 PM on January 23, 2017
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 12:48 PM on January 23, 2017
Always a good idea to look at Hujar.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:06 PM on January 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by From Bklyn at 1:06 PM on January 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
I think he's "forgotten" to some people. I mean, I'd never heard of him until I went on a David Wojnarowicz kick a couple of years ago. If you're a photographer, or a queer photographer, or were in that particular art scene, he's obviously not forgotten, but if you're Joe Averagely Literate About Contemporary Photography, you probably know about Mapplethorpe but not Hujar. If you're a queer person with some interest in the arts but younger than about 40 and not super familiar with photography, you might not know of him. (I base this on excitedly telling everyone about Peter Hujar everywhere I went back when I first went on this kick, and therefore having a pretty good idea who had heard of him in my general artsy people sphere.)
posted by Frowner at 1:25 PM on January 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 1:25 PM on January 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
I'd never heard of him until one of his portraits appeared on the cover of the trade paperback version of A Little Life. I would consider myself to be reasonably well-informed about art.
posted by holborne at 1:42 PM on January 23, 2017
posted by holborne at 1:42 PM on January 23, 2017
I'm looking forward to when the Peter Hujar show makes it to the Berkeley Art Museum in 2018. There are a couple other shows that are going to tour to BAM in 2017 that I'm also looking forward to - the Hippie Modernism show that started at the Walker and the Martin Wong show that started at the Bronx museum. (both of those shows are Cockettes-related.) Hujar also photographed Cockettes such as Sweet Pam, Fayette, and John Rothermell.
posted by larrybob at 1:45 PM on January 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by larrybob at 1:45 PM on January 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Can't hardly wait for 2018. This show will be in NY, and the Wojnarowicz retrospective will finally be up at the Whitney.
posted by old_growler at 5:29 PM on January 23, 2017
posted by old_growler at 5:29 PM on January 23, 2017
I'd never heard of him until I went on a David Wojnarowicz kick a couple of years ago.
I came to him through Warhol. If you read deeply enough into the Factory scene, you get to Hujar eventually. Still haven't read that recent Wojnarowicz bio, tho.
Hujar also photographed Cockettes such as Sweet Pam, Fayette, and John Rothermell.
I think he photographed Hibiscus as well, but I'm not certain of that and it isn't in that Hujar online archive. I've watched the documentary but I'd really like to read a solid history and/or memoir of the whole Angels of Light/Cockettes scene.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:27 PM on January 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
I came to him through Warhol. If you read deeply enough into the Factory scene, you get to Hujar eventually. Still haven't read that recent Wojnarowicz bio, tho.
Hujar also photographed Cockettes such as Sweet Pam, Fayette, and John Rothermell.
I think he photographed Hibiscus as well, but I'm not certain of that and it isn't in that Hujar online archive. I've watched the documentary but I'd really like to read a solid history and/or memoir of the whole Angels of Light/Cockettes scene.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:27 PM on January 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Ah! I came to him through David Wojnarowicz as well, and as a queer / art / under 40 this sort of thing is a balm to my soul. Hujar is so, so good. This is so good. Peace.
posted by beefetish at 8:13 PM on January 23, 2017
posted by beefetish at 8:13 PM on January 23, 2017
seconding Frowner. I'm pretty much a philistine when it comes to photography, so having people/MeFi do some handholding is very welcome!
posted by Collaterly Sisters at 3:43 AM on January 24, 2017
posted by Collaterly Sisters at 3:43 AM on January 24, 2017
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