PETER HUJAR
Posted on August 5, 2014 by Marco Maggetto
Not so much time left, until 24th August, to see this marvelous selection of pictures by American photographer Peter Hujar. Held at Maureen Paley Gallery London, this is the third solo exhibition to take place at 21 Herald Street.
He worked in black and white, he documented a tragedy in New York. He was a great friend of Diane Arbus, and both were admirers of Weegee and shared his dark vision. Hujar subjects spaced from the catacombs in Palermo to abandoned, wrecked cars. Despite an apparent modern approach, Hujar was a classicist that payed tributes to his role model photographers: Atget and Brassaï. Sensible, with a sharped eye for detail, Hujar is considered now a master for his particular way of recount grace in disintegration with a deep sense of mortality. In her introduction to Portraits in Life and Death, Susan Sontag wrote, “… Fleshed and moist-eyed friends and acquaintances stand, sit, slouch, mostly lie – and are made to appear to meditate on their own mortality… Peter Hujar knows that portraits in life are always, also, portraits in death.”
Photo: David Wojnarowicz Reclining (II) , vintage gelatin silver print.
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