Peter Hujar: Portraits in Life and Death

By Eileen Powers, Cohort ’22

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While moving hurriedly along Venice’s Grand Canal to an art installation at the Biennale, I caught sight of a sign for a photography exhibition entitled Peter Hujar: Portraits in Life and Death. Published in 1976, the book Portraits in Life and Death is now legendary; for years, the original single print run made the book so scarce that it became a collector’s item. Often referenced in MFA programs, Portraits in Life and Death has lived the life of the cult classic, discussed by many and seen by few. This is partly due to Hujar’s prowess as an artist and his genius as a print technician. He represents a specific time period in the 1970s–80s art scene in Manhattan and intimately knew young artists, writers, and performers who were part of the fabric of Greenwich Village. The philosopher and photography theorist Susan Sontag wrote the book’s introduction presumably from her hospital bed during treatment for breast cancer. 

Hujar struggled financially most of his life, but in the end, his binary treatment of the quick and the dead and his unabashed visual conversation with uncomfortable subjects made him a star. As a man who later died of HIV AIDs, one has to ask if the series was portentous or merely an exploration of life’s great mysteries.

The book and the exhibition of forty-one black and white prints are divided into two sections. The first, portraits of life, is composed of twenty-nine of Hujar’s now-famous friends like Sontag, filmmaker John Waters, and actor Divine (Fig. 1). This set of pictures was made between 1974–75 and features reclining subjects shot on barren fields of black or gray; some look directly at the camera, others look away. The second section, composed of portraits of mummies in situ (Fig. 2) taken in 1963 at the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo during an excursion with his then-lover Peter Thek, are overt images of anonymous individuals in death. The viewer sees skeletons adorned in wool robes accented with roses and memorial trinkets and behatted skulls peering vacantly from their crypts into oblivion. Other bodily remains simply loiter in place. The two series of images are a brash and unapologetic study of history and the finite through their straightforwardness. Having seen the images only online, I was curious to know if an exhibition widely described as concerned with temporality stood the test of time. 

German philosopher and phenomenologist Martin Heidegger wrote in Being and Time that “death reveals itself as a loss, but as a loss experienced by those remaining behind” (Heidegger 222), underscoring that death, in a sense, is for the benefit of the living. Certainly, Hujar’s exhibition is a case-in-point of that statement, nudging us with views of death that may spur us to lead better, more fulfilling lives in contrast with the finite. In On Photography, Sontag equated the photograph with captivity, writing, “Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality...One can’t possess reality, one can possess image—one can’t possess the present, but one can possess the past” (Sontag 163). In their frames, Hujar’s series can be seen as cages of a one-time present now past that anyone can now own, covet, or incarcerate. However, the subject is only contained by a photograph if the viewer is not curious enough to imagine it otherwise. The image’s potency lies latent beyond its frame.

Both Susan Sontag and French philosopher and essayist Roland Barthes viewed the photograph in terms of history as a representation of death. Barthes wrote of how he was “overwhelmed by the truth of an image” (Barthes 76). Portraits in Life and Death was considered groundbreaking and truthful at the time of its release, and many photography enthusiasts are still stunned by its morbid beauty. Still, some contemporary viewers are unmoved by its macabre appeal, preferring the work of Hujar’s compatriots.

Often pitted against contemporaries Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe, Hujar was for years under-appreciated. The popularity of Portraits in Life and Death has obscured the variety of the rest of his catalog. Regarding the exhibition, I fall on the negative side of the scale and say that the series lacks the edge and humanity of his other pictures. Outstanding images like Dog, West Town, New York (Scruffy Dog) and his Self-Portrait at the Baths (Fig. 3 and Fig. 4) show the darker, personal side of the photographer’s world and emotionally connect the viewer to his subjects and his life. Hujar’s images from this exhibition feel de rigueur, almost quaint in comparison. I expect the disappointment my viewing revealed is a product of my media-infused history. Perhaps these views shocked viewers in 1975, yet they feel repetitive and monotonous today. This is not a failing of the photographer but of the parade of time. It has been estimated that when an individual today reaches age 18, he or she has watched over 200,000 acts of violence on television. Perhaps since 1975, death has become so common that to the contemporary media viewer, these images withhold any reality-shifting shock.  

Barthes believed “The photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive” (Barthes 79). The influence of Instagram attests to those words, where the motion of the feed mimics the motion of life and creates a compelling illusion that all images are present. For Heidegger, mortal individuals are “present in the shelter of Being,” perhaps shielding themselves from being “capable of death” (Heidegger 176). Possibly through his images, Hujar is noting the illusion of lifelessness while reminding us he never loses sight of his subjects’ and his inevitable cessation. 

Exhibition:

Peter Hujar: Portraits in Life and Death‍

April 20–November 24, 2024

Istituto Santa Maria della Pietà 

Calle della Pietà, Castello 3703, Venezia VE, Italy

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Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. 1980.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Harper & Row, 1962.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. 1973.