Condoms, cows and contortions: Peter Hujar's astonishing vision

The Guardian

12-02-2025

A new exhibition is the first to take on the full breadth of Peter Hujar's later photography, co-curated by the artist's friend and printer, Gary Schneider, and his biographer, John Douglas Miller. Hujar's principal concern was with forms of portraiture – of his friends and denizens of the downtown scene, whom he encountered on the street, shot in his apartment studio or sought out backstage. The show has received glowing reviews in both the Guardian and Observer. Peter Hujar: Eyes Open in the Dark is at Raven Row, London until 6 April. All photographs: The Peter Hujar Archive/DACS London/Pace Gallery, NY/Fraenkel Gallery, SF/Maureen Paley, London and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Hujar was a central figure in the downtown scene of 1970s and early 1980s New York, but at his death in 1987 from Aids-related pneumonia his work was largely unknown to a broader art world. Now it is widely admired for its austere elegance and emotional charge. The exhibition also reveals the darkening tone of Hujar's photography in the early 1980s, as the Aids crisis devastated his community, and his work entered into dialogue with the younger artist David Wojnarowicz
John Douglas Miller writes: 'This is such a Romantic image and one of only two early works in the Raven Row exhibition. Peter Hujar made a trip to Florida with the painter Joe Raffaele, to visit Paul Thek and his then lover, the set designer and painter Peter Harvey who introduced them to artists and writers in Key West including Tennessee Williams. Back in New York, Hujar and Thek would become lovers in the early 1960s, just as Thek began to gain serious attention from the art world'
John Douglas Miller: 'Hujar was interested in the motif of the veil throughout his work, whether the veil was literal, as is the case here, or achieved through tonal work in the darkroom. This was taken backstage at Robert Wilson's The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin. It's a remarkably elegant image, suitably operatic given the context'
John Douglas Miller: 'Richie was a performance artist and actor, often found performing outside the luxury stores on 5th Avenue or hanging out at Max Kansas City with Andy Warhol's crowd. This is the first image in the exhibition, and it shows Gallo backstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music where he was performing in experimental theatre director Robert Wilson's opera, The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin. The text on the door reads 'Open Slowly'. Gallo looks as though he's going to do anything but'
Writer Fernanda Eberstadt: '[Stephen] flounced into a branch of Chemical Bank wearing a gown made of dollar bills, with breasts formed by condoms filled with fake blood. Shrieking that someone had forged a million-dollar check in his name and he wanted the money back 'Now!', Stephen exploded his condom-breasts like a gender jihadi and began writing cheques with the blood. He was forgotten, because his art was so militantly ephemeral, and because most of the photographers who documented his performances also died of Aids and were forgotten'
Eyes Open in the Dark concentrates on Hujar's later work, when his emergence from a debilitating depression in 1976 brought about a new expansiveness. John Douglas Miller writes: 'Hujar was often interested in contorted poses. I think it has to do with where the mind has to go in order to perform them – the sitter must fully inhabit their body and let go of their day-to-day defences'
John Douglas Miller: 'Ethyl Eichelberger was, by all accounts, a remarkable performer in off-off Broadway productions. She had the opportunity and talent to be a successful conventional stage actor, but was determined to plough her own furrow, a wilfulness that Hujar always respected. They were extremely close and Ethyl was one of four people at Hujar's bedside when he died'
John Douglas Miller: 'Hujar's animal portraits are rightly admired for the way he seems to be able to capture the specific nature of the animal he is photographing without anthropomorphising them, or at least by raising the question of what is at stake in our desire to do so. He maintains something of the uncanny in our encounters with animals. Sometimes his animal portraits feel tragic and deep, but here a lighter comic element is provided by the apparent relationship between the two cows and their questioning regard of the camera'
John Douglas Miller: 'I love this image of a turkey. It's so wonderfully other, the strange prehistoric feel of it, the wonderful contrast of textures. The bird's seeming self-regard, and ancient, alien gaze. The neck is so sculptural, as though it were cast in metal, or beads of mercury. When we began hanging the show on the day of Trump's inauguration, I kept looking at this image and the associations were difficult to avoid: the destruction of nature, turkeys voting for Christmas, preening self-importance'
Gary Schneider: 'Peter made many self-portraits. This one in his jock strap is particularly proud and defies the audience, even though he looks world-weary. Showing off his always-impressive physique. At this moment he was in his late 40s. There are two other self-portraits from the same session in the Raven Row exhibition. In each he examines himself in very different attitudes'
Gary Schneider: 'John Flowers's character was known as Devil with a Blue Dress. There were two Palm Casino Revues: 1972 and 1974. These revues were a series of many short performances produced by Sheyla Baykal, a close friend of Peter's. A portrait of her is also in the exhibition and has not been exhibited previously'
John Douglas Miller: 'This is another image that hasn't been shown before. It's extraordinarily intimate and the tonalities are quite beautiful. We tried hard to identify the sitter but without success so far. Hujar often photographed people he met on the street who he invited up to his loft and she may have been one of them, her name, for now, lost to time'
John Douglas Miller: 'This is a ruined staircase in one of the abandoned piers on the west side of Manhattan. In the 1970s and 80s the piers became vagabond art spaces and cruising zones and Hujar often photographed them. This image is a particularly foreboding one, and as with so much of Hujar's work, it is about the possibility of encounter. There might be a trick up those steps, or there might be a knife. But at the same time the staircase and the darkness become something more abstract, resonant and existential'