Peter Hujar at Paris Photo:


In pictures: Jim Jarmusch on the surrealist images that inspired his films

By THOM WAITE

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

© ESTATE OF KENSHICHI HESHIKI, COURTESY IBASHO

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)
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.

New Publications!

Peter Hujar: Rialto

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.

Buy Peter Hujar: Rialto

Portraits in Life and Death

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.

Published by Liveright, W.W. Norton

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

Currently available on Amazon

What’s on now?

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

Sep 13th 2024 – Jan 12th 2025 at The Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany.

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.

Upcoming Solo Shows:

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.

https://centropecci.it/it/mostre/programma-espositivo-2024

Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark

Exhibition of photographs at Raven Row in London. Opening January 29 2025, closing April 6 2025.

“In January 2025, Raven Row in London will stage Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark. The exhibition is curated by Hujar’s close friend, the artist and master printer Gary Schneider, and the writer and Hujar biographer John Douglas Millar, with assistance from Raven Row’s director, Alex Sainsbury. Working closely with the Hujar Estate, this is the first posthumous exhibition to have access to the complete span of Hujar’s work. As well as vintage prints it will include prints from little known works specially prepared by Gary Schneider.

Eyes Open in the Dark will concentrate on Hujar’s late or mature style. After completing work on his only lifetime monograph, Portraits in Life and Death in December 1975, Hujar entered a period of debilitating depression. In part this was the strain of completing a major body of work, but it was also a reaction to the death from cancer of his friend the choreographer James Waring, who Hujar had cared for in the final months of his life and whose portrait, made only weeks before he died, was one of the last completed for the book. Emerging from this period in the spring of 1976, Hujar’s work finds a new expansiveness. His approach to the various genres of photography that had always concerned him – architectural, landscape, street photography and human and animal portraiture – is brought to a new pitch of maturity as he processes his influences into a fully achieved and devastating personal style. The exhibition also reveals the darkening tone of his photography in the early 1980s as the AIDS crisis devastates his community and his art enters into dialogue with the work and life of his sometime lover and protégé, David Wojnarowicz.” – Sam Talbot

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.

https://www.masp.org.br/exposicoes/programacao-anual-2024

Disco I’m Coming Out:

exhibition at the Philharmonie de Paris

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 archivesphotographs, 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.

Peter Hujar: Rialto at The Ukrainian Museum

Opens 2 May 2024

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. 

222 East 6th Street, NYC

ANIMAL WATCH at 125 Newbury Gallery: January 26, 2024-March 2, 2024

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.

https://www.125newbury.com/exhibitions/animal-watch#tab:slideshow;tab-1:thumbnails

Ocula Magazine – May 2022

Peter HujarMaureen Paley, Independent Art Fair

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 Magazine explains.

https://ocula.com/advisory/perspectives/tefaf-and-independent-new-york-advisory-selections/

The New York Times – April 2022

A Lover’s Impact on David Wojnarowicz, for All to See

A show at PPOW gallery explores the artist and author’s first significant relationship, with Jean Pierre Delage, which liberated him emotionally and changed him artistically.

Book release – Fall 2021

Peter Hujar’s Day by Linda Rosenkrantz

Edited and designed by Jordan Weitzman and Francis Schichtel
With an introduction by Stephen Koch

On December 18, 1974, Linda Rosenkrantz asked her friend Peter Hujar to write down everything he did one day. Hujar met Rosenkrantz at her apartment on 94th street the following day where she asked him about it in detail. She tape-recorded their conversation and this book is a full transcript of that exchange, published here for the first time since it was recorded 47 years ago.

https://magichourphoto.org/books/peter-hujars-day

NYT – August 2021

[At Karma Gallery is] a group show curated by the critic Hilton Als around the idea of faith, with [Peter} Bradley’s new abstract paintings featured alongside works by Diane Arbus and Peter Hujar. 

Swann – August 19, 2021

Swann Auction Galleries presents LGBTQ+ Art, Material, Culture & History. August 19, 2021 at 12:00 pm ET – Sale 2578


Richard Weinroth – Shoes, 1979

Peter Hujar, Lot 107.

https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/PETER-HUJAR-(1934-1987)-Man-on-chair-(Richard-Weinroth)?saleno=2578&lotNo=107&refNo=778162

LGBTQ+ Art, Materl Culture & HistoryAug 19, 2021 at 12:00PM ET – Sale 2578 –

Last Tango – July 2021

Cockroach Or Queen?

Cockroach or Queen?, Installation view including, Penny, 1981, by Peter Hujar.
Photo: Kilian Bannwart

11.06.2021 – 14.08.21


Alfredo Aceto, Joe Brainard, Keren Cytter, Germann & Lorenzi, Doug Johns, Gregory Hari, Peter Hujar, Chris Kraus, Fabio Luks, Robert Mapplethorpe, Mickry3, Genesis P-Orridge, Camillo Paravicini, Gil Pellaton, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Andreas Waldmeier and Latefa Wiersch

With books by Lutz Bacher, Joe Brainard, Keren Cytter, Kristin Dombek, James Franco, Gertrude Stein, Seth Price, Patti Smith and more

https://www.lasttango.info/cockroach-or-queen

The Art Newspaper – June 2021

Larry Ree Backstage (II), 1974

From John Akomfrah’s enthralling three-part film to Peter Hujar’s nightlife photographs

TOM SEYMOUR and KABIR JHALA

For almost 20 years, Peter Hujar photographed the nocturnal drag movement of New York City—what might be seen as a precursor to the non-binary activist movement of today. This work, which could not be more current, has finally goes on show at Maureen Paley. Hujar left his abusive New Jersey home at 16 to live with his English teacher, Daisy Aldan, who encouraged him to seriously pursue photography. He became a student of denizens such as Diane Arbus, and, between 1970 to 1987, immersed himself in the city’s wildly creative drag scene, which remained at the margins of New York’s artistic society. Hujar was hellbent on capturing how this emergent art form was able to reinvent gender beyond female impersonation, employing an improvisational style of performance that worked in the lineage of ancient Greek theatre, European Surrealism and Hollywood musicals. His images reflect the layers and multivalencies incumbent in drag; here, artifice, fashion, narrative and gender are held high by the clarifying and combinational power of still photography.

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/review/exhibitions-london-peter-hujar-john-akomfrah