Shining Light on Peter Hujar’s Formative Years

As a longtime fan of photographer Peter Hujar, seeing his work have its moment in the sun is as exciting as it is gratifying. By no means an unknown in the art world, his documentation of the vibrant queer scene that defined New York City’s Christopher Street pre-AIDs and the black and white portraits of downtown icons like Susan Sontag, John Waters, and drag queen Divine, have made him an indelible figure in American photography. Still, he hasn't received the same attention as his contemporaries Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, and David Wojnarowicz. Until now.

Nearly four decades since the photographer died of AIDs at the age of 53, his pioneering career is bubbling to the top of the cultural canon. His seminal 1975 series, 'Portraits in Life and Death' was showcased in Europe for the first time as part of the 60th Venice Biennale in April and earlier this year it was announced that British actor Ben Whishaw (best known for his supporting role as Q in the James Bond franchise) has been cast as the photographer in the forthcoming biopic based on Linda Rosenkrantz’s Peter Hujar’s Day.

Now, a new exhibition at New York City's Ukrainian Museum is exploring the photographer's formative years. 'Very little is known about Peter Hujar's early years, and very little written about his formative years in the 1950s and 1960s,' explains museum director Peter Doroshenko. Looking at the first 15 years of his creative career, Peter Hujar: Rialto presents 74 photographs taken between 1955 and 1969, offering insight into how Hujar became one of New York City's leading, counterculture documentarians.

Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Hujar spent his early years on a farm raised by his Ukrainian grandparents. It wasn't until he enrolled at Manhattan's School of Industrial Art in 1952 that he began to earnestly pursue his artistic interests. During this time, he apprenticed in commercial photography, honing his skills behind the camera.

His artistic awakening came in 1967 when he participated in a master class taught by the legendary fashion photographer Richard Avedon and artist Marvin Israel. Marking a turning point for Hujar, he left the confines of commercial photography in favour of exploring more creative endeavours. It’s these years of discovery that comprise Doroshenko's curation.

The exhibition is split into three strands of works that defined this period in Hujar's life; South Connecticut, Florence, and Capuchin Catacombs. ‘From the very beginning, Hujar was very focused and hard on himself to take the best photographs that he could,' states Doroshenko. 'These three vectors helped to define his later work and opened up various possibilities to work with a variety of individuals from the music, art, theatre, and sub-culture worlds.'

In 1957, a visit to the Southbury Training School for mentally challenged students in Connecticut marked one of Peter Hujar's earliest forays into capturing the lives of social pariahs through his lens. The following year, Hujar embarked on a journey to Florence, Italy, where he documented the experiences of neurologically impaired children. These early photographs reveal a profound tenderness and compassion, reflecting Hujar's innate sensitivity, psychological insight, and meticulous compositional skill — hallmarks that would define his reverred approach to portraiture. It was also this poignant series of works that caught the attention of Avedon.

The third strand in the curation comes from another of Hujar’s trips to Italy. His documentation of Sicily’s Capuchin Catacombs shines a light on the photographer’s career defining fascination with mortality. Amidst the macabre ceremony of seventeenth-century Palermo society’s afterlife traditions, Hujar’s lens transitioned from capturing the exuberance of children at play to sombre portraits of headstones and corpses.

It serves as a precursor to his iconic ‘Portraits in Life and Death’ series, where he immortalised the vitality and quietude of friends, lovers, and acquaintances. Capturing the beauty and fragility of life in all its stages, ‘Hujar was able to begin the slow process of untangling what identity, relationships, and sex were during conservative times, even for New York City,’ says Doroshenko on the artist’s oeuvre.

Imbued with a sense of quiet contemplation, what makes Hujar’s work so magical is the solemn dynamism he brought out of his subjects (both living and dead) and it's on this trip to Sicily where the artists' poetic sensibilities really begins to take shape. More than an anthology of the formative years of a career that was cut short, viewers are left to reflect on the artists’s early explorations of the complexities of identity, desire, and death. ‘Just like the Frank Sinatra song, Peter Hujar did it his way,’ explains Doroshenko. ‘He was a visionary and creative man who never knew the word, mediocre,’

Peter Hujar: Rialto is on now at The Ukraine Museum until 1 September.