Peter Hujar: Portraits in Life and Death

Reaching only cult status when he was alive, Peter Hujar spent his life enmeshed in the much-eulogized bohemia of late 20th-century downtown New York. That Warholian locale of artists, writers, and musicians whose work has gone on to define contemporary culture. Some of Hujar’s subjects include writers Susan Sontag and Franz Lebowitz, Warhol superstars Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis, and fellow artists David Wojnarowicz and Paul Theck. His subjects overflow with eccentricity and delirious personal stories, though in Hujar’s frame they become, perhaps surprisingly, relatable.

Take the standout photograph Candy Darling on her Deathbed (1973). Perfectly made up with rollered hair and her arms, capped in blooming satin sleeves, elegantly draped across the bed, Darling looks like the figure of a renaissance painting. Or, as Hujar would later describe, as if “playing every death scene in every movie.” Held at a distance in the mystique of her alluring beauty, she is simultaneously pulled closer by the harsh hospital lighting that illuminates sterile-striped bedsheets. A fresh bunch of white hydrangeas rise up behind her, and a smaller bunch of roses, slowly dying, shadow the foreground of the image. One rose is placed parallel to Darling’s body on the bed, stark black against the white like an ominous scene from a Tennessee Williams play. It is theatrical in its symbolism, yes, but couldn’t be more realist in its meaning. Darling truly was on her deathbed, and died less than a year later at just twenty-nine.

This is the documentary aspect so central to the affective force of Hujar’s work. He himself died in 1987 at fifty-four from complications with AIDS, a disease that had already taken the lives of most of his friends and photographed subjects in the years before. His death would be marked by a striking piece by David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Hujar Dead) (1988-99), which photographed Hujar just shortly after his death. Both artists’ work are testament to the pervasive death that depresses the memory of the Greenwich Village bohemia. In this exhibition, Hujar’s confrontation with such widespread death is explicit.

A memento mori to his friends and fellow artists, this exhibition intersperses natural scenes amongst their portraits. Photos of leafless trees against low grey clouds are almost apocalyptic in their representation of decay. Yet they are contrasted against the glistening waves off the coast of Sperlonga, Italy, which sparkle under a divine sun and seem heavenly in comparison. The two extremes are compounded in Altar, Storm, Fire Island (1971). A driftwood cross is imbued with divine-like power by the dark clouds and lighting beams that frame it. Against the rest of the exhibition it appears, starkly, like the grave that marks all of Hujar’s subjects including, now, Hujar himself.

The time that has since lapsed between the initial publication and now foregrounds the allure of death, perhaps more so than it did initially. However, the photos, even as most of them are now death portraits, are not overwhelmed by it. Perhaps it is the mystery of death that makes it so alluring. This is, I think, what Hujar leans into as he finds the beauty in it – the haven, or heaven, after it. There is an unshakeable tranquillity in the photographs. Most subjects lie on their beds in a kind of blissful come down. Draped in duvets or nothing at all, they lie in post-ecstatic bliss, as if taking respite from their hedonistic lives. This respite is profoundly simple, peaceful and maybe slightly melancholic. This is where humanity shines through in all its loveliness. It is uncontrived beauty without excess, and even just in viewing it we can share it.

This balance has justly elevated Hujar’s recognition to one of the most influential American photographers of the late 20th century. Even those unaware of his name might be familiar with his work on the cover of Hanya Yanagihara’s devastating 2015 novel, A Little Life and Antony and the Johnsons equally devastating 2005 album I Am a Bird Now. The former feature’s Hujar’s 1969 Orgasmic Man, while the latter depicts his Candy Darling portrait. As his photographs come to inspire other artists, Hujar’s depictions of humanity prove all the more universal. While he once said, “my work comes out of my life,” it seems, perhaps surprisingly, to come out of all our lives, too. 

The exhibition is currently on show at Mendes Wood DM gallery in Sāo Paulo. The gallery was founded in 2010 by Felipe Dmap, Matthew Wood and Pedro Mendes to platform intellectually rigorous art, that upholds their resolute belief that art has the capacity for social change and resistance. Their exhibitions seek to facilitate cross national dialogue that emphasises regional differences while still fostering cosmopolitanism and collaboration.