Peter Hujar: Piers
Christopher Street Piers were an important site of emerging gay cuture in the 1970s and 80s, and an inspired location for artists, who used the dilapidated structures as canvas or backdrop for their work.
Christopher Street Piers were an important site of emerging gay cuture in the 1970s and 80s, and an inspired location for artists, who used the dilapidated structures as canvas or backdrop for their work.
Christopher Street Piers were an important site of emerging gay cuture in the 1970s and 80s, and an inspired location for artists, who used the dilapidated structures as canvas or backdrop for their work.
To Hujar, who grew up on a farm, animals and people were of equal interest. His photographs of dogs, horses, and cows seem to convey a mutual recognition between photographer and subject, a sort of calm acknowledgement.
Hujar’s sometimes playful, often bleak photographs of New York after sunset show revelers of the nightlife and a decaying urban landscape, all wrapped in a velvety blackness broken only by street lamps, fluorescent building windows, and the camera’s flash.
The composed portraits of lovers, friends, and artists of New York’s Downtown milieu, often photographed in Hujar’s own loft, capture each sitter in an unrestrained moment of openness and connection.
Studies of New York’s towering buildings, neighborhoods in transition, and the sea shoreline beyond the city limits.