Opening Ceremony Part 2

OMGZ I haven't updated in so long. Blogging is so much harder when you have a life. Ok so Peter Hujar at Matthew Marks. Peter Hujar part of that 70's and 80's downtown New York scene and he died of AIDS in 1987. His photos all have a strange, dark, beautiful quality. Everytime I see his pictures I want to throw some black and white film in a Hasselbald. Here are some of the works I know him by:

Candy Darling on her Deathbed, 1974



David Wojnarowicz, 1981



Daniel Schook Sucking Toe, 1981



Susan Sontag, 1975

The show I saw was made up of portraits of developmentally disabled children. The subject matter relates to his portraits of his friends who could were considered misfits in their time. The photos were shot in homes for disabled children and I got a sense that these homes were their own world. It becomes unclear how much the subjects or the photographer cause the feeling of things being slightly off.

Childern Playing by a Pool, Southbury, 1957

Children With Nun, Florence, 1958

Girl with Hand on Her Hip, Southbury, 1957



Children Playing, Florence, 1957



Boy Rubbing His Eye, Southbury, 1957

I always think of Peter Hujar as a ratty downtown punk but apparently he got pretty glossy at one point. From the Times in 2003:

Many of the portraits are of New York culture stars. Others are of types largely absent from Burckhardt’s bohemia and Johnson’s handwritten who’s who: transvestite performers, hustlers, street people. And interspersed among the living are the dead: photographs of desiccated corpses that Hujar shot in Sicilian catacombs. Bohemia had become, literally, the underground.

Hujar, a child of Ukrainian immigrants, raised in a broken and abusive home, was pretty much on his own by 16. He learned photography largely as an apprentice in the fashion industry. Through Richard Avedon, he landed steady gigs for Harper’s Bazaar, and opened studio of his own.

Then, in the early 70’s, he gave up commercial work to finish the portrait project.

Full Article HERE.

I wish I was landing steady gigs for Harper's Bazaar...