Early on, Hujar was inspired by the photography he saw in fashion magazines, some of which — such as Harper’s Bazaar and GQ — he would later shoot for.
Peter Hujar
Peter Hujar (1934–1987) was raised by his Ukrainian immigrant grandparents in rural New Jersey, while his mother lived and worked as a waitress in Lower Manhattan. He never met his father, who disappeared before Hujar was born. After his grandmother died, his mother brought 11-year old Hujar to live in New York with her and her boyfriend.
As a young artist in New York, where he would have explored the galleries of Greenwich Village and art institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, he was greatly influenced by the candid street photography of Lisette Model, particularly her intimate portraits of the varied characters she found within gritty cityscapes. One of several breakthroughs in Hujar’s career was his acceptance into the masterclass taught by photographer Richard Avedon and famed art director Marvin Israel in 1967.
While his photographic output covered everything from celebrity portraits to Italian catacombs to nocturnal cityscapes, Hujar is probably most known for his honest and astute portraits of New York City creatives in the 1970s and ’80s.
He despised what he considered overly-aestheticised compositions, and was more interested in documenting habitués of the adventurous downtown world in which he lived, not as novelties, but as people he admired for their bold embrace of their true identities. ‘My work comes out of my life. The people I photograph are not freaks or curiosities to me. I like people who dare,’ he once said. His shots of drag performer Ethyl Eichelberger and transgender artist Greer Lankton are just two examples of audacious subjects he was drawn to in his portraiture.
While his work was eclipsed in his lifetime by that of Robert Mapplethorpe, Hujar seemed to favour working in relative obscurity. According to his friend Steve Turtell, Hujar once said, ‘I want to be discussed in hushed tones. When people talk about me, I want them to be whispering.’
The past 15 years have seen a steady rise in the value of Hujar’s work. Today there is an increasing appreciation of the fact that his prints provide an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the art, fashion, experimentation and collaboration that flourished in downtown New York in the early 1980s.
Hujar’s life ended abruptly in 1987 at the age of 53. Diagnosed with AIDS in January of that year, he died in November, surrounded by his friends.