5783 Photographs Peter Hujar Thought No One Would Ever See

Hujar, Peter, 1934-1987, Contact sheet: Gary Schneider at 189 Nude, 2013.108:8.3611. All photos courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum.

Peter Hujar kept every contact sheet he ever made, which suggests he never stopped believing someone would eventually come looking for them. Over the course of his lifetime, he shot Patti Smith, Candy Darling, David Wojnarowicz, and Susan Sontag, becoming a central figure in the cultural life of downtown New York without ever quite becoming famous. He was, as curator Joel Smith puts it, missing “the gene for self-promotion.” Though assured of his own genius, he was largely ignored beyond his homestead in the East Village. This spring, the Morgan Library & Museum makes the case for what Hujar always knew. Hujar: Contact draws from the archive of over 5,783 contact sheets Hujar preserved until his death in 1987. The show also arrives at the moment of a Hujar revival: Ira Sachs‘s biographical film Peter Hujar’s Day introduced him to audiences well beyond the art world, while Andrew Durbin‘s new biography wrestles with his chaotic personal life. The contact sheet was never meant to be artwork but rather a working object, a way for film photographers to see what they’d shot before committing to a full print. But Hujar’s sheets are something else: each one a full roll of film reduced to thumbnail-sized frames, marked up in oil pencil, annotated with the thinking he otherwise left unrecorded. Smith calls them “an intimate history of Hujar’s habits, inspirations, and happy accidents.” More than 110 works are now on view through October 25th, with a selection (including some exclusives) shown below.

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Hujar, Peter, 1934-1987, Contact sheet: James Waring, recto, 2013.108:8.916

Hujar, Peter, 1934-1987, Contact sheet: Jay and Fernando / leather / studio, recto, 2013.108:8.480

Hujar, Peter, 1934-1987, Contact sheet: Candy Darling, Columbus Hospital, September 1973, recto, 2013.108:8.5770

Hujar, Peter, 1934-1987, photographer, Contact sheet: Palermo Catacombs [contact sheet], 1963, 2013.108:8.5272.

Hujar, Peter, 1934-1987, Contact sheet: Christopher Street Fair, Spring 1973, recto, 2013.108:8.1867

Contact sheet: Diana Vreeland, recto, 2013.108:8.2239

Fayette 1971, recto, 2020.104

Contact sheet: b. Jackie Curtis for New Times, recto, 2013.108:8.1200

Contact sheet: John Heys and Angel [Rodriguez according to John Heys, nee Grace Espana], recto, 2013.108:8.3259

Contact sheet: Sheryl Sutton 189, recto, 2013.108:8.3010

Steve Lawrence, Tompkins Square Park ca. 1966, recto, 2022.223

Contact sheet: Susan Sontag, recto, 2013.108:8.2314