Peter Hujar: Eyes Open in the Dark review – visions of a vanished world
by Sean O’Hagan for the Guardian, Feb 2 2025
“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.”