Peter Hujar's London Retrospective: A Testament to the Artist's Emotional Power

Regarded as one of the preeminent gay photographers of the 20th century, it’s no wonder the opening of the highly anticipated retrospective on Peter Hujar, Eyes Open in the Dark, at Raven Row would bring out London’s gay art crowd in droves. A testament to the image-maker's reverence in today’s gay community, the exhibition—crowded as it was with both attendees and Hujar’s breadth of work from the latter half of his career—was nothing short of a success for co-curators Gary Schneider, a collaborator and friend of Hujar, who brings his insight from knowing the artist, and biographer John Douglas Millar.

Hujar’s career, often overshadowed by the AIDS epidemic that devastated New York and stifled the blossoming Gay Liberation Movement, is framed here in a more personal and artistic light. While Hujar is remembered for photographing pivotal moments, such as his work with David Wojnarowicz, curators insist activism was never his intent. Instead, Hujar sought to capture moments of raw beauty and intimacy—whether in portraits of friends, animals, or abandoned architectural spaces.

The sheer volume of over 130 prints across the gallery’s four floors may draw critiques on those easily overwhelmed with Schneider himself admitting, 'It's not an easy show. We're not handing it to you on a platter.' Yet the inclusion of Hujar's work across varied subjects reflects the complexity of Hujar’s gaze and life, inviting viewers to connect with his work on their own terms. Ultimately, Eyes Open in the Dark serves as a love letter to an artist whose imagery both defines and transcends its time. In conversation, Schneider and Millar thoughtfully explore the tension between intimacy and distance, vulnerability and resilience, that defined Peter Hujar's singular vision.

SHOWstudio: What is it about Peter Hujar’s work, particularly the latter years the exhibition explores, that continues to ignite such reverence today?

Gary Schneider: 'He believed he would become famous. This famous, no one believed, including himself. I think why it's working now is because he epitomises a particular approach to art that a lot of eighties artists didn't. He remains a modernist, with a very personal approach to making art, to making a photograph that really wasn't understood in his lifetime. But in retrospect, it is very understood.'

John Douglas Millar: 'It was locally successful at the time in New York, but I think at the moment, critically, it was difficult for it to find a place because in the late 70s you’re moving into this moment where appropriation is becoming the dominant critical element.'

GS: 'He never objectified his subject the way so many people in that time did. They were photographing to document the gay scene or the AIDS scene. He never did that at all. It was always a one on one relationship with the person he was photographing. And he was photographing them because he was vastly interested in them. Not because they were important or particularly beautiful  — even though he was interested in glamour, it was more like, what was it about them that was glamorous?'

SHOWstudio: I think the that notion of appropriation and documentation is really fascinating because he’s often framed as a documentarian of the era.

JDM: 'In an interview with David Wojnarowicz, Hujar says that these images are echoes of time. He says specifically that they don't really have anything to do with the moment in which the flash goes off for him. The subject has a life on the paper that is separate from that moment. He was quite resistant to the idea of documenting in the way that it's commonly understood in photography. That vision is constructed to a degree, right? I think partly because of the emotional immediacy of the images, you sometimes miss that. The work he was doing in the dark room to build a romantic image, they're nothing like what was going on the previous generation.

SHOWstudio: What was the connecting thread you looked for when curating this show?

JDM: 'Fran Lebowitz, who was friends with Peter, has this interesting line that could be misinterpreted. She always says, ‘Peter was not curious about the people he was photographing,’. It doesn't make sense on one level, but it was really important that the person in front of him, as Gary says, was someone that he was connected to in some way, or that he found something in that person that was useful for the image. He was trying to get at something quite essential consistently. There's a level on which it really matters who's in front of him. And there's also a level on which it doesn't because he's seeking this thing within them.' 

GS: 'This is the foundation of this show, the nut we're now talking about. What we were searching for when putting this show together with those images that did that in a kind of accessible way, right? There's lots of other kinds of images, but this is the real core. It’s the connection, like where we as the audience of these pictures feel that connection most powerfully.'

SHOWstudio: What difficulties did you run into during the curatorial process?

GS: 'It's the intensity of the exchange between him and the thing, because it could be a piece of architecture or a bush or a tree or water. It's the intensity of that connection, like, how successfully did he vibrate? How did he make it resonate?'

JDM: 'Peter could be quite goofy at times. But this is not a show that contains that much of that element of his character. This is quite gritty.'

GS: 'People would say, ‘Ooh, this work is just too dark for me.’ I think in retrospect, it isn't actually. You feel he's celebrating life, even when he's photographing a mummy in a catacomb. He's really celebrating that thing or that person.'

SHOWstudio: How did you navigate presenting these deeply personal, tragic ideas in a way that will resonate with contemporary audiences?

JDM: 'In a sense, it's unavoidable because it's there, right? Joel Smith, who curated a show in New York, said a very resonant thing about Peter's work, that the brutality in the work is everything outside the frame that is pushing on the subject, so all the social and economic forces that are pushing on that person, and what's beautiful is them bearing it. And I think that's true of Peter's work all the way through. It's consistent as an element, I think.'

'But of course, what's outside the frames? And AIDS emerges outside Peter's frame, and that influences how you read the work. Peter wasn't documenting the AIDS crisis in any sense. I don't think that's something that interested him, to do that kind of work. I think, retrospectively, because so many of the people who were in those images died of AIDS, it becomes an unavoidable memento mori in a sense, and it carries that weight.'

SHOWstudio: The narrative around Hujar always circles back to his activism in AIDS was this something you wanted to explore?

JDM: 'He was not an activist. I mean, he was as far from being didactic as an artist as it's possible to be. Of course, it's really important to draw out that history. But it's important to recognise that that's not what his intention was when he was making these works. When he met David in the early 80s, I think there was a shift in subject matter.'

GS: 'If you look at the whole trajectory of the work before and after AIDS, for me there really isn't a shift. What is shifting is the world around him. And because Peter is photographing his world around him, we see it emerging in the work, but he's not exactly cognisant of that shift. Some of those people that he's photographing are very conscious of it because they could be sick or they have loved ones who are sick.'

SHOWstudio: Being a close collaborator of Hujar's, I was interested to know if there was anything you’re bringing to the exhibition based on personal experience that will give audiences new insight to his work?

GS: 'I printed for him during his lifetime, the last year of his life, because he didn't want to be around chemicals. So he just closed his darkroom.'

JDS: 'One of the things that's interesting about the show is Gary prints the work, he's a total connoisseur. He knows how these prints work in a way that is intimate with Peter's own understanding of their work that no one else could possibly have. Gary thinks a little more narratively in a sense.'

GS: 'I don't think the show could look like this and feel like this if it hadn't been both of us. He was my teacher, Peter, and he liked to have mentees. David was one, even Kiki Smith a little bit, Nan Goldin a little bit. People like that.When it came to printing the work, I didn’t invent anything. I went directly to him for all of the information that becomes synthesised into a new version. And it's a new version because it's also digital. It's also ink. It's not silver. It's not the paper, the paper he printed on died when he died in 1987.'

Eyes Open in the Dark is open to the public at Raven Row until 6 April, 2025.