Peter Hujar
(1934 - 1987) U.S.A.
Photographer
Peter Hujar was born in Trenton, NJ. In 1946 he moved to Manhattan and became a photographer working for magazines, advertising, and the fashion industry. At the end of the 1960's he opened his own studio and ever more radically developed his own approach to photography. He was a close friend of David Wojnarowicz. Peter Hujar died of AIDS related complications.
Peter Hujar paid his dues in commercial photography - magazines, fashion, advertising - on his way to developing his own voice, his own art. His milieu was New York and the core of his work was black-and-white portraiture of his friends, many of whom were drawn from the intelligentsia as well as the gay subculture of the city.
In his photographs of male nudes Hujar accomplishes something truly extraordinary. Bruce de Saint Croix standing confidently before the camera, the light bathing his slim, smooth body, his genitals emphasized by shadow; Daniel Schook, Sucking Toe in a contortionist pose performing a somewhat odd self-pleasuring; the more direct Masturbating Nude.
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