Artist, Photographer and Printer Gary Schneider reflects on his relationship with Hujar
Gary Schneider, John Erdman, 2024. Courtesy: Gary Schneider
“Artist and master printer Gary Schneider was a close friend and occasional subject of Peter Hujar, the New York-based photographer famed for his empathetic photographs of artist and writer friends, drag performers, nude lovers, farm animals and cityscapes. Since Hujar’s death in 1987, Schneider has been entrusted with making prints of his late friend’s work, a process he describes in engrossing detail in his recent book Peter Hujar Behind the Camera and in the Darkroom (2024). More than three decades spent poring over Hujar’s photographs has given Schneider an unrivalled insight into how their austere elegance was achieved. Here, he remembers what it was like to work with Hujar, the ‘eccentricities’ of his prints and how their years of friendship and collaboration inspired his co-curation, with John Douglas Millar, of ‘Eyes Open in the Dark’ at Raven Row in London – the first comprehensive UK survey of Hujar’s photographs to date. – Alastair Curtis”
Excerpt from the interview with Gary Schneider:
“GS : I was young, and I was in awe of him. I thought he was a truly brilliant artist. In the studio session, you can see that, at first, I was trying to make ‘Peter Hujar’ images for him. He didn’t direct. He just waited. He allowed you to come to him. It was your job, as the performer, to trust him fully – to trust that he knew what he was doing and to allow it to happen, rather than to try to make it happen….”
A special episode on three artists dealing with the crisis in different ways (31 January 2025)
“Peter Hujar, Gregg Bordowitz and Rotimi Fani-Kayode are three artists whose work reflects in different ways on the Aids crisis that has devastated communities across the world since the 1980s.
Hujar, who died from Aids-related pneumonia in 1987, is the subject of a new show at Raven Row in London, the largest to date at a UK gallery. Our host Ben Luke takes a tour of the show with its curators, the writer John Douglas Millar, and the artist, master printer and model for some of Hujar’s photographs, Gary Schneider. “
“The artist Gregg Bordowitz was a member of The Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, founded in New York in the 1980s. Bordowitz has lived with HIV since the late 1980s, and it has fuelled his art and activism ever since, as a new show at Camden Art Centre in London demonstrates. We spoke to him about his life and work.”
Listen to this episode of The Week in Art in the audio file below, or click here.
Stephen Paley’s cover artwork for Newspaper volume two, issue one, 1970. Image courtesy of Primary Information.
‘A point often insisted upon in these recollections is that Hujar had little interest in the institutionally recognized vanguard art of his time, namely Minimalism and Conceptualism. Wojnarowicz spoke to the untimeliness of Hujar’s work when, with Conceptual and post-Pictures generation photography in mind, he wrote that it “blows a hole through the artworld sanctioned view of photography in the later part of the twentieth century.”4 There are, though, materials emerging from the archive that provide opportunity for a nuancing of the critical narrative. The art historian Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez and the publisher Primary Information have done valuable work toward this end by collating and publishing every issue of Newspaper, a textless journal published by Stephen Lawrence and edited with Peter Hujar and Andrew Ullrick (a currently unidentified figure; Yáñez speculates that the name could be a pseudonym for Hujar himself) during the late 1960s and early 70s when Hujar and Lawrence were lovers sharing an apartment at 188 Second Avenue in the East Village, an apartment that also served as the journal’s offices registered, resonantly, as Affinity, Reality, Communication Inc.
The journal looks like a conceptual object. Images from gay and straight porn, mainstream and countercultural news media, advertising (sometimes commissioned adverts, though they are placed within the journal without being obviously so), work by artists including—amongst many others—Paul Thek, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Ray Johnson, Andy Warhol, Yayoi Kusama, Peter Beard and, in every issue, several images by Hujar himself, are arranged within the foundational structures for Minimalism and Conceptualism, the series, and the grid. Yáñez has written that Newspaper “championed a method of chaotic reading of images.” “The apparent chief concern for Hujar and Lawrence in arranging the pages of the magazine,” he writes, “was that images were brought together from disparate contexts, mixed up, and placed together in a way that forced meaning and correspondence beyond their apparent lack of connection and/or hierarchical distinctions.” ‘
‘…Lawrence and Hujar produce a comic queer configuration of conceptual art that speaks specifically to a gay art-world-adjacent coterie in downtown New York, to the high into low/low into high strategies of “camp.” The journal’s first titled issue has at its center a piece by the British artist Gerald Laing that presents a game in which the viewer is asked to match the portraits on the right-hand page with the penises printed in ink on the left. The portraits are all characters from the queer art scene of the time, and the piece invokes a kind of salon joke that separates those inside from those outside. Indeed, the journal muddies every category it engages: advertising is inseparable from non-commercial images, art from porn, war photographs from images of domestic life, and all in a format that can be found bogged in the gutter or raised onto the pure white walls of MoMA. ‘ – John Douglas Millar.
Richie Gallo (Backstage, The Life & Times of Joseph Stalin, Brooklyn Academy of Music), 1973
“Hujar’s images translate a private experience into a public consciousness. A break of light in the Hudson River is an epiphany. A devout portrait of Lola Pashalinski, where she seems to be unspooling her costume and revealing her heart, is an aria. He provides a brief but welcome departure from our ‘pre-invented’ world.”
White Turkey, Pennsylvania, 1985
“The exhibition at Raven Row successfully reveals the light and dark sides of Hujar’s photography. On the walls we have an open-mouthed expression of blame and shame and the “terrific repercussions” we will all one day face.”- Brià Purdy
” By rights, Peter Hujar should be far more famous than he is.
Born in New Jersey in 1934, the photographer was a contemporary of Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin, and a close friend and sometime lover of Paul Thek and David Wojnarowicz. He rubbed shoulders with countless artists and literary luminaries, photographing everyone from Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag and Wiliam S. Burroughs to Greer Langton, John Waters and Cookie Mueller. Pretty much anyone notable in the thriving art scene of downtown Manhattan in the 1970s and ’80s was acquainted with Hujar. “
“This exhibition is a timely one, coinciding with the imminent portrayal of the artist on the big screen in Peter Hujar’s Day, an Ira Sachs-directed two-hander based on a book by Hujar’s friend Linda Rosenkrantz. Starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, the film got great reviews when it premiered at Sundance in January, and will receive a wider release later this year. The exhibition’s co-curator, art critic John Douglas Millar, is also hard at work on a forthcoming biography that will be published through the prestigious imprint Fitzcarraldo Editions.
A mere four decades after his death, it seems that Hujar is finally getting his dues as a major force in 20th-century photography.” – Rosie Hewitson
“Raven Row, London The American photographer Peter Hujar, who died of Aids complications in 1987, chronicles New York’s 70s and 80s gay scene – and much else besides – in this haunting retrospective.”
“It’s the human portraits that linger though, many of them featuring his subjects reclining. A nude from 1975, mysteriously titled TC, exudes a languorous sensuality redolent of a classical painting. In another, the downtown scenester Cookie Mueller, also immortalised by Nan Goldin, stares out at us almost defiantly. In stark contrast, an unknown girl sleeping on the tiled floor of a New York doorway looks comatose. That this snatched portrait somehow evades intrusiveness is testament to Hujar’s complex gaze.”
“At the heart of Hujar’s work is his distinctive approach to portraiture. He captured friends, fellow artists, and strangers from the streets of New York, often in intimate settings like his apartment studio or backstage at performances. Hujar emphasized the idiosyncrasies of his sitters, their individual qualities, and human sentience over their bodily form. He revealed moments of imperfect expression that communicated the inherent humanity of those in front of the lens. Hujar’s self-portraits often leaned toward the candid or subtly playful. However, there is one instance where he ventures into the more provocative and homoerotic territory that his contemporary Robert Mapplethorpe explored with unabashed intensity. “
Canal Street Pier, New York (Stairs), 1983
“In addition to showcasing Hujar’s well-known lifetime prints, Eyes Open in the Dark features lesser-known works specially prepared by Gary Schneider, offering fresh insights into Hujar’s approach and deepening our understanding of his legacy. These prints, created in close collaboration with Hujar’s estate, reveal new dimensions of his artistry.”
Person in Veil (Backstage, The Life & Times of Joseph Stalin, Brooklyn Academy of Music), 1973
Peter Hujar’s Eyes Open in the Dark is filled with intimacies and confrontations, empty lots, New York up close and seen from afar, hidden spaces and days in the country, sex and bodies, life and death. The effects are cumulative, taking us on a journey that is filled with variety, tenderness and vulnerability, surprise and shock.
Tragically, it’s impossible to talk about Hujar’s life and work without considering the Aids crisis which ravaged the queer community in the 1970s and 80s. While John Douglas Millar – the co-curator of the Raven Row retrospective, and Hujar’s biographer – acknowledges that “it’s difficult to say in any straightforward way how the Aids crisis influenced Hujar’s work formally,” as time goes on it feels impossible to avoid acknowledging the ways in which it creeps in on the edge of the frame. “
“As the career-spanning retrospective Eyes Open in the Dark opens at Raven Row in London, we present a dA-Zed guide to the life and work of Peter Hujar, whose photographs remain as aesthetically power and politically urgent now as they were decades ago. “click the link for the full article.
“From sumptuous Sunday lunch spots to standout exhibitions on Saul Leiter and Peter Hujar, we’re ushering in the new year with a roundup of cultural offerings guaranteed to bust the January blues”
‘Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London: January 30 – April 6, 2025 Later this month, Raven Row will open a new exhibition of work by Peter Hujar, curated by the late American photographer’s biographer John Douglas Millar, and his close friend, the artist and master printer Gary Schneider. Unusually, the display will place emphasis on Hujar’s later work, including portraits of his fellow denizens of downtown New York, his street photographs and more. Of particular note are the expansive images he made after his emergence from a debilitating depression in 1976, and the stirring pictures he took in the early 80s “as the Aids crisis devastated his community, and his work entered into dialogue with the younger artist David Wojnarowicz”. ‘ -Daisy Woodward
The director has selected his highlights, past and present, from this year’s Paris Photo, including works by Dora Maar, Peter Hujar, Zanele Muholi, and more
In the closing scene of Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), two icons of the American avant-garde, Bill Rice and Taylor Mead, make a toast to “Paris in the 1920s… and New York in the 70s”. Both are historic periods marked by artistic revolution: the flourishing of NYC’s radical counterculture, and the official dawn of surrealism in 1924. And both have had a lasting influence on the filmmaker’s career, from Stranger Than Paradise to Paterson.
“As a restless teenager, surrealism was a revelation to me, first in its visual forms and then its literary ones,” Jarmusch says, ahead of this November’s Paris Photo, where he’s curated a personal selection of artworks that celebrate “this defiant and joyful artistic disruption” on its 100th anniversary. “In my early twenties it first drew me to Paris, where I repeatedly used Breton’s Nadja as a kind of walking map through the mysterious nocturnal streets of the city.”
His selections for the 2024 edition of Paris Photo, Jarmusch adds, aren’t purely Surrealist, but “reflect its tenets of the transformation of the ordinary into the dreamlike, and at times vice-versa”. They include iconic works like David Hockney’s swimming pool photos, Peter Hujar’s morbid catacomb shots, and Robert Frank’s 1965 portrait of Jack Kerouac, alongside Lisetta Carmi’s subversive images of trans community in 1960s Genoa, Daidō Moriyamanudes, and Zanele Muholi’s contemporary exploration of race.
John Kayser, sans titre (1973)Courtesy christian berst art brut
The collection strikes a balance between the history of surrealism (see: works by Man Ray and Dora Maar) and a more intuitive approach, notes Anna Planas, artistic director of Paris Photo. “I was very intrigued, beyond the link with surrealism, [by] the personal references. Jarmusch was a friend of Robert Frank and Arākii, and you can wander through the selection between different cities like Tokyo, Berlin or New York.”
Jarmusch’s multifaceted approach serves as a reflection of the fair as a whole, where surrealist heritage is placed alongside modern artworks inspired by the movement, using traditional forms as well as the – increasingly surreal – tools of the digital age. It’s significant that all of this comes together in Paris, Planas adds. After all, it’s where André Breton wrote and published the Surrealist Manifesto a century ago. Today, the hope is that presenting surrealist works old and new “shows the creative roots of the city and reveals how this heritage [is] still alive in contemporary art”.
Through his presence at Paris Photo, Jarmusch takes this one step further. Besides the artistic route he’s curated, and a conversation with writer Philippe Azoury on November 8, the filmmaker presents a series of Man Ray’s “striking surrealist films from the 1920s” for the fair. These four films come accompanied with new post-rock scores by SQÜRL (a band comprising Jarmusch and producer Carter Logan) that, in Planas’ words, “reactivate surrealist strategies” used in the historic works.
This unique exhibition catalogue, published with Rodovid Press in Kyiv in conjunction with the artist’s exhibition at The Ukrainian Museum, provides new insights into the seminal and lesser- known aspects of Peter Hujar’s career, living and working in the Ukrainian Village. The exhibition explores the first fifteen years of Hujar’s professional career. He was a consummate technician, and his portraits of people, animals and landscapes, with their exquisite black-and-white tonalities, were extremely influential. Highly emotional yet stripped of excess, Hujar’s photographs are always beautiful, although rarely in a conventional way.
The lushly illustrated publication features 77 photographs, some never seen or published. Three important interviews with Hujar’s closest friends and colleagues, plus a scholarly essay on his work with the photographer Richard Avedon, chronicle Hujar’s ceaseless creative exploration and observation of life in the East Village of New York.
A new edition of the cult classic photography book by the legendary Peter Hujar.
“I am moved by the purity of [Hujar’s] intentions…. These memento mori can exorcise morbidity as effectively as they evoke its sweet poetry and its panic.” —Susan Sontag
Portraits in Life and Death is the only book of photographs published by Peter Hujar during his lifetime. The twenty-nine portraits of creative people—ranging from William Burroughs, Susan Sontag, and John Waters to Larry Ree, founder of the Trocadero Gloxinia Ballet Company, and T.C. (whose identity is unclear)—possess a haunting beauty and degree of psychological examination that is both offbeat and riveting. Following the portraits come eleven images that can only be described as devastating: pictures of semi-preserved, clothed bodies of nineteenth-century Sicilians found in the arid catacombs beneath a church in Palermo.
There is no necessary connection in the photographs themselves or between the two sections of the book, yet the pictorial progression from life to death is an emblem of the journey we all take. The living subjects seem to be meditating on the mortality that is limned with such profound effect in the catacomb pictures. In different ways, both groups of images speak to the basic fears and emotions that we carry with us, somewhere beyond our consciousness. After viewing this extraordinary book, it is almost impossible not to make those connections and interpretations or be moved by Hujar’s consistent ability to convey what appears to be the inner spirit of his subjects.
Even so, an air of nonchalance, even gaiety, hovers over the photographs. The book is odd, oblique, sometimes opaque, and certainly deeply felt; but it sticks to the mind like a burr. It will be noticed. Once seen, it cannot be forgotten.
Peter Hujar Behind the Camera and in the Darkroom,
Intimate remembrances of Peter Hujar from his friend, posthumous printer and sometimes subject Gary Schneider
This suite of heartfelt accounts invites the reader firsthand into artist Gary Schneider’s journeys in image making with his friend and mentor, the beloved photographer Peter Hujar (1934–87). Drawing from a selection of Hujar’s pictures, Schneider (born 1954) takes each image as a point of departure to share his expertise as Hujar’s posthumous printer. Outside the darkroom, Schneider situates his chronicle squarely within the transformative social shifts of downtown New York City in the nascent years of the AIDS crisis. Through a mix of Schneider’s stories and technical prowess, he creates a rich tapestry that serves both as a historical testimony and a portrait of their relationship.
Schneider also writes in captivating detail describing his experience with Peter Hujar refining his abilities as a printer, as a subject of Hujar’s portraiture, as an extra hand accompanying the photographer on cruisy, nighttime shoots, and of when he turned the lens on Hujar to record him as a subject in his filmic work. Informative as it is stirring, Peter Hujar Behind the Camera and in the Darkroom is an indelible portrait of a relationship delineated by photography, desire and gratitude.
Peter Hujar Behind the Camera and in the Darkroom is published by Bookcrave Books
Current group shows featuring work by Peter Hujar:
Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection
At the V&A Museum in London from May 18th 2024- January 5th 2025
An unparalleled selection of the world’s leading photographers, telling the story of modern and contemporary photography. Discover iconic images across subjects such as fashion, celebrity, reportage and the male body.
Showcasing over 300 rare prints from 140 photographers, Fragile Beauty is a major presentation of 20th- and 21st-century photography on loan from the private collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish.
Selected from their collection of over 7,000 images, the photographs (many of which will be on public display for the first time) are era-defining images which explore the connection between strength and vulnerability inherent in the human condition.
The exhibition covers the period from 1950 to the present day, bringing together an unrivaled selection of the world’s leading photographers to tell the story of modern and contemporary photography. Celebrated works include a monumental installation of 149 Nan Goldin prints from her Thanksgiving series, as well as images from Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, William Eggleston, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, Zanele Muholi, Ai Weiwei, Carrie Mae Weems and others.
Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection runs from 18 May 2024 to 5 January 2025
GROW IT, SHOW IT! A Look at Hair from Diane Arbus to TikTok
From Afro, locs, braids or cornrows to bob, beehive or taper, hair is an integral part of our everyday culture and offers unlimited design possibilities. How we choose to show or hide, grow or shave our head, facial and body hair is an expression of our personality, but also of our affiliation to social, political, religious or cultural communities. We use hairstyles to communicate, optimise and conceal a part of our identity, to set ourselves apart or fit into a collective, and thus to send out messages – whether intentionally or unintentionally. In the everyday tension between intimacy and public representation, we use our hair to show our individuality, conformity, rebelliousness or solidarity.
The exhibition entitled Grow It, Show It! explores the historical, political and everyday cultural significance of hair through a wide range of historical and contemporary photographs, videos and film clips from art as well as fashion and social media. The comprehensive exhibition shows that hair is always a carrier of information. The way we wear our hair is not only determined by the pursuit of beauty ideals, but has always been politically and socially charged as an identity-forming feature, a ritual symbol of power, a spiritual material and a communicator of social status.
In its historical and popular science dimension, the exhibition explores the question of how representations of hair at the interface of art, fashion and advertising photography are not only the subject of the beauty industry, but also of queer-feminist, body-political and post-colonial discourses. At the same time, the exhibits dating from the 19th century to the present day shed light on the ways in which images of hair have consolidated and defined trends over the course of time.
With works of: Hoda Afshar, Laura Aguilar, Diane Arbus, Ellen Auerbach, AWA: la revue de la femme noire, BALAM, Jürgen Baldiga, Barber Turko, Carina Brandes, BRAVO, Nakeya Brown, Tessica Brown, Julia Margaret Cameron, Jim Carrey, Chaumont–Zaerpour, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Rineke Dijkstra, Juan Pablo Echeverri, Anna Ehrenstein, Lotte Errell, Jason Evans, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Samuel Fosso, Pippa Garner, André Gelpke, Weronika Gęsicka, Camilo Godoy, Nan Goldin, Ulrich Görlich, Henriette Grindat, Carola von Groddeck, F. C. Gundlach, Johann Hinrich W. Hamann, Mona Hatoum, Florence Henri, Florian Hetz, David O. Hill & Robert Adamson, Thomas Hoepker, Ewald Hoinkis, Peter Hujar, Graciela Iturbide, Lebohang Kganye, Jens Klein, Peter Knapp, Herlinde Koelbl, Paul Kooiker, Anouk Kruithof, Andreas Langfeld, Alwin Lay, Zoe Leonard, Madame d’Ora, Mahmoud Manaa, Ana Mendieta, Sabelo Mlangeni, Suffo Moncloa, Marge Monko, Thandiwe Muriu, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Emmanuel Ndefo, Helmut Newton, Satomi Nihongi, Nicholas Nixon, Fred Odede, Bubu Ogisi, Mobolaji Ogunrosoye, J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Ulrike Ottinger, Helga Paris, Doris Quarella, Rebecca Racine Ramershoven, Alfred A. Rau, Eugene Richards, ringl + pit, Roxana Rios, Torbjørn Rødland, Thomas Ruff, RuPaul, August Sander, Viviane Sassen, Max Scheler, Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, Lorna Simpson, Slavs and Tatars, Annegret Soltau, John Stezaker, Tabboo!, Hank Willis Thomas, Wolfgang Tillmans, Marie Tomanova, Tunga, Danielle Udogaranya (Ebonix), Dorothea von der Osten, William Wegman, Tom Wood, Yatreda, Leyla Yenirce, Sheung Yiu.
Peter Hujar: Performance and Portraiture; Italian Journeys
An upcoming exhibition of photographs at Centro Pecci, Prato, Italy. Curated by Grace Deveney, David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography and Media, the Art Institute of Chicago, with Stefano Collicelli Cagol
On view:12.14.2024 – 05.04.2025. Opening night: 12.13.2024
Peter Hujar (1934 -1987) is one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century who, between the sixties and eighties, immortalized in his shots the bodies of a community of people close to him who became in many cases among the most iconic figures of American culture. Hujar focuses on the beauty of the body in all its forms and postures, immortalized through the themes of portraiture and action. The exhibition is organized by The Art Institute of Chicago, and has been further expanded in collaboration with the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art. In the Pratese iteration, the exhibition is enriched by a series of photographs taken in Italy between the fifties and seventies. In those years, Hujar had the opportunity to travel to different areas and cities of the country including Florence, Palermo and Naples, returning an unexpected vision that is still disturbing today for the intensity with which people, landscapes and animals have been caught.
This is the first posthumous exhibition to have access to the complete span of Peter Hujar’s work. Hujar was a leading figure in the downtown scene of 1970s and early 80s New York, but at his death in 1987 from AIDS-related pneumonia his photography was largely unknown to a broader artworld. Now it is widely admired for the emotional affinity it demonstrates for its subjects, and its austere formal elegance.
Hujar’s principal concern was 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. He also gave attention to architectural, landscape and street photography, and animal portraiture. Eyes Open in the Dark concentrates on his later work, when his emergence from a debilitating depression in 1976 brought about a new expansiveness. The exhibition also reveals the darkening tone of his photography in the early 1980s, as the AIDS crisis devastated his community, and his work entered into dialogue with the younger artist David Wojnarowicz.
Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark is curated by Hujar’s biographer John Douglas Millar, and his close friend, the artist and master printer Gary Schneider, with Alex Sainsbury. As well as lifetime prints it will include prints from little known works specially prepared by Gary Schneider, working closely with the artist’s Estate.
Upcoming Group Exhibitions:
Stories of LGBTQIA+ curated by Adriano Pedrosa for Museu de Arte de São Paulo-MASP, Brazil
12.13.2024—4.13.2025
This large-scale collective exhibition Stories of LGBTQIA+ closes the 2024 programming of the year of MASP. With about 200 works from public and private collections from Brazil and abroad, the exhibition will be organized in several nuclei. Stories of LGBTQIA+ will occupy the two main spaces of the MASP gallery dedicated to temporary exhibitions: in the second basement and first floor of the museum, totaling approximately 1,000 m². The plural notion of stories, in Portuguese, is particularly relevant (as opposed to the notion of History in English, for example), as it can cover fiction and non-fiction, personal or political reports, private or public narratives, having an open, speculative, diverse and polyphonic character.
Since 2016, the Stories are accompanied by a large catalog published in Portuguese and English and an anthology (only in Portuguese), which brings together important texts on the subject, including essays presented during the international seminars organized in previous years in anticipation of the exhibition.
Curators: Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director, MASP; Julia Bryan-Wilson, deputy curator of modern and contemporary art, MASP, with assistance from Leandro Muniz, curatorial assistant, MASP, and Teo Teotonio, curatorial assistant, MASP.
Disco music is coming to Paris, and more precisely to the Philharmonie, in a brand-new exhibition to be discovered from February 14 to August 17, 2025. It’s an opportunity to revisit the history of this musical movement, which originated in the United States over 50 years ago!
After hip-hop, electro and metal, the Philharmonie de Paris turns its attention to disco! This musical genre, which became a worldwide phenomenon in the 80s, is the new theme chosen by La Villette’s cultural establishment. Running from February 14 to August 17, 2025, the ” Disco I’m coming out ” exhibition will take visitors back in time, following in the footsteps of this style born in the USA in the early 70s.
Disco music is firmly rooted in the history and culture of black America, and has left its mark on several generations thanks to cult tracks that have stood the test of time.
Through a series of audiovisual archives, photographs, instruments and costumes, the ” Disco I’m coming out ” exhibition aims to show the political and festive dimensions of this musical movement that has made millions of dancefloor fans dance, and continues to do so to this day. What’s more, disco has brought together different minorities and social classes on the dancefloor.
The aesthetic appeal of disco to artists and designers will also be explored, as will the integration of disco into pop culture, with, of course, the worldwide success of the film ” Saturday Night Fever “.
The exhibition, accompanied by an original remix by Dimitri from Paris, can be seen from February 14 to August 17, 2025 in the exhibition space of the Philharmonie de Paris. To mark this cultural event, a number of concerts are scheduled from February 21 to 23, featuring Cerrone, Dabeull Live Band, a disco party and a waacking dance battle! Find out all about the program on the Philharmonie’s official website.
The Ukrainian Museum is excited to present the exhibition Peter Hujar: Rialto, opening on 2 May 2024. Peter Hujar (1934-1987) exemplified the downtown New York arts scene. He was born to an immigrant family, and his Ukrainian grandmother raised him exclusively in the Ukrainian language until he was 5 years old. His difficult and unstable upbringing in a troubled household influenced his artistry and vision significantly as Hujar turned to a career in photography. He learned from some of the greatest photographers in the industry, and his training, paired with his identity and background, resulted in the powerfully disruptive and influential photographs that he created in the early years of his career. He would later plant his roots in the heart of New York City’s East Village, also known as the Ukrainian Village, where he would be enthralled by the world of performance art, music, theatre, and literature.
125 Newbury is pleased to present Animal Watch, a group show exploring the intimacies, affects, and subjectivities of animals. The exhibition opens on Friday, January 26 with a public reception from 6pm to 8pm and will remain on view through Saturday, March 2.
The exhibition, which brings together an intergenerational group of artists working across a wide range of mediums, includes works by Gertrude Abercrombie, Alexander Calder, Ann Craven, Julie Curtiss, Jean Dubuffet, Natalie Frank, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Emilie Louise Gossiaux, Edward Hicks, Morris Hirshfield, Peter Hujar, Joan Jonas, Nina Katchadourian, Allison Katz, Jon Kessler, Lyne Lapointe, Robert Longo, John Lurie, Diana Michener, Yoshitomo Nara, Robert Nava, Richard Pousette-Dart, Lucas Samaras, Kiki Smith, Carolee Schneemann, Nolan Simon, Saul Steinberg, Bill Traylor, Mose Tolliver, and Jonas Wood. Through fantasy, fiction, fabulation, and fact, works by these artists celebrate, investigate, and make visible the deep entanglements between animals and us.
Throughout his 30 year career, Peter Hujar photographed those at the creative margins of New York society.
Showing with Maureen Paley, David Wojnarowicz Reclining (II) depicts the American artist Wojnarowicz, with whom Hujar was in a relationship at the time.
Lying in an unmade bed, Wojnarowicz is captured in one of Hujar’s distinctive black and white, intimately staged frames, with his clasped hand across his naked torso.
‘Hujar was a darkroom master. Known for consistently using the same square format firm, his intention to take ‘uncomplicated direct photographs of complicated and difficult subjects’ extended from pastoral landscapes to erotic nudes’, Ocula Magazineexplains.
