Peter Hujar: Eyes Open in the Dark
January 30 - April 6, Raven Row
Curated by John Douglas Millar, Gary Schneider & Alex Sainsbury
(Left) Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz, 1981 (Right) Peter Hujar, Cookie Mueller, 1981
Peter Hujar was a photographer of vulnerability, and it is glaringly evident in Peter Hujar - Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row Gallery. Hujar’s dear friend Gary Schneider alongside biographer John Douglas Miller have laced together an elaborate show of the artist’s work from the 1970s-80s up until his death in 1987, when he passed away from AIDS related pneumonia at age 53. A walk through the gallery is like walking hand-in-hand with Hujar on a grey Sunday in New York, the artist guiding one through back alleyways, apartment corridors, bedrooms, studios, nightclubs, funerals and even the dark, reflective surface of the Hudson River, inky waves swelling and crashing into the edges of the photographer's lens.
Hujar’s work is not terribly optimistic–it is not a sunny depiction of the human condition; however, it is not wholly pessimistic either. Eyes Open in the Dark is a constellation of moments—some are melancholic, some joyful, some sensual, some mundane, some posed, some candid, but always keenly observant and pensive in their clever, artful compositions. The photos that perhaps best emulate Hujar’s ability to capture the ebb and flow of human life are the various portraits of his friend, fellow artist, and past lover David Wojnarowicz. There is the portrait from 1981 where Wojnarowicz fingers conceal his face, all but an illuminated eyelid exposed between his pinky and his ring finger resides in shadow. The subject is caged between his own fingers, stark lighting forming almost landscape-esque slopes and curves between his naked collarbone and shoulder. This meditative, poised, close portrait deeply contrasts the one of Wojnarowicz two years later— the subject unposed, clothed, hand-in-pocket and cigarette between fingers comically standing next to a mural of an ox with a large black tongue protruding from its toothy mouth. Hujar, photographer of sex and death, humorously snaps a photo of his lover licked by a caricature ox. Beautifully tragic photos of the dead, contorted bodies on studio floors, mangy birds and portraits of babies, and here is this photo of David— a lover licked by an ox, comedy to be found amidst a decaying ceiling and forgotten debris.
Hujar captures the cyclical nature of our placement on earth: living day by day, sequentially and with what meaning we can create from moment to moment, until it’s over. Morbidity, movement, and stillness found in between— that seems to be what his lens falls most frequently upon. Schneider and Douglas Miller have filled the intimate, home-like space of Raven Row to the brim with Hujar’s work; it is almost suffocating, claustrophobic. But amongst this anxious, hurried need to view and consume is a poignant reminder of what it truly means to observe, to breathe and to look and to think about what it is that quietly sits in front of us. This is how Hujar walked through his life and his craft: camera in hand, eager to peel back the shiny surface of modern life and find what intimacies, tragedies, and authentically human behavior lies beneath.
Peter Hujar - Eyes Open in the Dark is on until the 6th of April at Raven Row Gallery in Spitalfields, London.
Peter Hujar, Person in Veil (Backstage, The Life & Times of Joseph Stalin, Brooklyn Academy of Music), 1973
Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowicz (At Pier 34 Exhibition), Canal Street, New York, 1983
Peter Hujar, Jackie Curtis, Funeral, 1985
Peter Hujar, Girl Sleeping in Doorway, 1976
Peter Hujar, Hudson River Series, 1975-76
