Exhibition: ‘Hujar:Contact’ at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, New York

Exhibition dates: 22nd May – 25th October, 2026

Curator: Joel Smith, Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography

1955-63: Beginnings

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Dead Fish, Fire Island
1960-1962
Gelatin silver print, mounted on board
Image/Sheet: 10 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches (37.3 x 28.5cm)
Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Peter Hujar Collection
Gift of Stephen Koch

Hujar found an unlikely elegance in this unpromising subject, discovered as he began spending more time in the early 1960s on Fire Island, off the southern coast of Long Island. The excavation of beauty out of decay points to Hujar’s early admiration for the wide-ranging work that Irving Penn had been publishing in Vogue magazine since the 1940s.

Large print label text

An empathetic eye

As many of you may know from reading Art Blart over the years, I deeply admire the work of the American photographer Peter Hujar (1934-1987).

With this exhibition we get to dive into the contact sheets of the artist which give insight into “the nature of his attention and the unique personality of each of his subjects.” They allow us, the viewer, to better understand the flow of Hujar’s creative process and the focus of his vision – the consistency of that vision, how he approaches his subject matter, his understanding of light, framing, presence – and the “rhythm of Hujar’s looking.”

I feel (a critical word) that Hujar approaches his subject with an open and informed mind. Using the experience of his many years as a commercial photographer he has the innate ability in his personal work to put the camera in the right place at the right time, to find time and time again what he is looking for in direct, honest, beautiful photographs of places, animals and people.

I look at the contact sheet for Caven Point, New Jersey, with David Wojnarowicz (1984, below) and observe that not one shot is wasted, that Hujar knows exactly his directorial language. He is an auteur with a recognisable personal style, recurring themes, and deep artistic control.

While less confrontational, more empathetic, more cinematic in the feeling of spatiality in the image, Hujar’s approach to subject matter is similar to a photographer of a slightly earlier generation, Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971) who also ran a commercial photography studio, working as an art director, conceptualiser, and stylist before becoming disillusioned with the artificial demands of the commercial fashion world, then moving into mainly portrait photography.

Both artist’s know how to get the most from their subject matter letting the sitter – cow, horse, human, giant – speak of their place in the world, photographs revealing their inner spirit and energy. As Loring Knoblaunch observes, “As seen in these contact sheets, Hujar seemed to work best in a loose flow of time, where collaboration and connection were the variables that ultimately mattered to the capturing of a durable visual essence.” This is the embodiment of Hujar’s art.

Various texts insist on a sense of desolation (a state of extreme emptiness, destruction, or deep, hopeless sadness), fatalism and melancholy present in Hujar’s photographs:

“Woven throughout Peter Hujar’s photographs is a profound sense of fatality about the world. This bleakness in his art reflects both the abuse he faced as a child and his concern about the AIDS crisis which, at the time, only showed signs of worsening.” (Text from the Morgan Library & Museum Facebook page)

“Postindustrial Queens, windblown Caven Point, and burned-out, riot-torn Newark were places that appealed to Wojnarowicz’s and Hujar’s attunement to disaster. Their fatalism reflected the neglect and abuse each of them had known in childhood, as well as their consciousness of an AIDS crisis that only showed signs of deepening.” (Large print label text)

and in Loring Knoblauch‘s excellent review of the exhibition:

“Hujar’s work has always been filled with themes of darkness, melancholy, and alienation, and the visual evidence in his contact sheets reinforces those moods, but with a quiet undercurrent of attentive resolve.”

I don’t feel this at all.

As a gay man myself, having survived years of abuse growing up and having lived through the initial AIDS crisis in the 1980s and survived (and lost a lot of friends), I don’t find Hujar’s photography at all dark or bleak in regards to family, growing up or the AIDS crisis. In fact quite the opposite, I find his photographs uplifting, inspiring in their humanity and empathy.

Fatalism … what the hell is that anyway? “the philosophical and psychological doctrine that all events are fixed in advance by fate or an overarching power, making human free will, choices, and actions powerless to change the outcome”

No. Hujar’s very photographs speak against this concept (that human free will, choices and actions are powerless) through what he chooses to photograph, through the snap of the shutter (this instant not another) and through his photographs of protests against the lack of HIV/AIDS funding. Human actions DO matter in the outcome. And as to alienation (a state or feeling of being cut off, isolated, or estranged from people, society, or oneself), Hujar’s very engagement with the world – through his city, community and friends, through so many intersections with reality, so many points of view, forming such a nexus of connections – obviates such a reading of his work.

Through these contact sheets, through Hujar’s empathetic vision, we become, as Marina Vitaglione puts it, “immersed in the rhythm of Hujar’s looking.”

That looking is always lyrical, joyous and very human.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. What we need now is an exhibition on the beginnings of Hujar’s artistic career!

Many thankx to the Morgan Library and Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.

Many thankx also to Loring Knoblauch and the Collector Daily website for allowing me to publish the installation photographs in the posting. Permission is very much appreciated. Her review of the exhibition is excellent and offers the reader numerous insights into Hujar’s artistic practice.

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“The changing of a pose, the tilt of a head, a move a little closer, a different angle of approach, a laugh, a moment of relaxation, a moment of anxiousness or wariness, another shift, and then bang! There it is. And of course, Hujar couldn’t know whether he’d gotten or not, so he often kept going. But for students of studio portraiture, this is the master class on offer in this exhibit – watch what he was looking for, how he was moving and adapting (quietly and unobtrusively hunting even), and where he ultimately found the pivot point where something boring became something unexpectedly vulnerable or compelling.”

“Hujar’s work has always been filled with themes of darkness, melancholy, and alienation, and the visual evidence in his contact sheets reinforces those moods, but with a quiet undercurrent of attentive resolve. He actually found what he was looking for more often than not, which is part of the reason his place in photographic history is secure.”

Loring Knoblauch. “Hujar:Contact @Morgan Library,” on the Collector Daily website, August 21, 2026 [Online] Cited 03/10/2026

installation view of the exhibition 'Hujar:Contact' at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, New York, May - October, 2026

installation views of the exhibition Hujar:Contact at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, New York, May – October, 2026. Many thankx to Loring Knoblauch and the Collector Daily website for allowing me to publish the installation photographs in the posting.

1966-72: Onto the Page

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo, with Paul Thek
1963
Job 256, 11 sheets
Contact sheet fragments
Dimensions vary – 3 fragments: 7 3/4 x 2 3/4 inches each; 1 fragment: 5 x 3 1/2 inches
Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Peter Hujar Collection, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Near the end of their time in Italy, Hujar and Paul Thek visited the catacombs maintained by monks of the Capuchin order in Sicily. Thek was fascinated by the site, which he described as a room “decorated with corpses”; soon after returning to New York, he would be making sculpture exploring the decay of the flesh and the body’s status as an object. The photographs Hujar made in the catacombs in, as he said, “about 20 minutes,” proved to be of outsize importance in his later work, forming the second half of his 1976 monograph, Portraits in Life and Death.

Large print label text

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Joseph Raffael among other Stable Gallery artists and staff
c. 1967
Job 327, 11 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Peter Hujar Collection, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

The group portrait is one of the most purely functional genres of photography: Creativity is stymied by the logistical challenge of attaining an exposure in which nobody blinks. Photographer Peter Hujar was attracted to the challenge. As seen in the markings on his contact sheets, he treated the group setting as a means of eliciting responses from selected individuals. In each frame of the eleven sheets in which Hujar portrayed those connected with the Stable Gallery, he drew squares to single out his former boyfriend, Joseph Raphael.

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Hujar:Contact offers an unprecedented look into the life, times, and creative evolution of a master photographer. The exhibition features more than 110 contact sheets and 20 enlargements from the Morgan’s Peter Hujar Collection, which includes over 5,700 contact sheets from throughout the artist’s career.

Peter Hujar (1934-1987) began filing contact sheets and assigning them job numbers at age twenty-one. His records make it possible to track his development – from two decades as a studio assistant (1955-1967), when he pushed himself to try work of every kind, into the late 1960s and his work as a freelancer in fashion, music, and advertising, through his mature period (1974-1987) as a fiercely independent and influential artist in the East Village.

Many of the contact sheets bear editing marks that indicate ideas about cropping and printing and contextualize the exposures Hujar ultimately decided to enlarge. The intense, interactive quality of his portrait work comes to life in contact sheets that read as intimate pictorial narratives, revealing the nature of his attention and the unique personality of each of his subjects. As Hujar matures and struggles, and as the character of his social world changes from the 1950s through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, his contact sheets tell the nuanced story of a lifetime, a community, and an era.

Text from the Morgan Library & Museum website

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) 'Road trip to Pennsylvania and West Virginia with Ann Wilson and Jim Fouratt' 1969, job 463

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Road Trip to Pennsylvania and West Virginia
1969
Job 463, 23 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Peter Hujar Collection, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

In October 1969 Hujar undertook a car trip to Pennsylvania and West Virginia with Jim Fouratt and the artist Ann Wilson. Wilson recalled gratefully that the journey was Hujar’s way of keeping her occupied after the sudden death of her husband, critic Gene Swenson, in a car crash. For Hujar, the purpose of the trip was making portraits of animals that he sought out along the way, including horses, sheep, and cattle. It would be another seven years before he pursued animal portraiture in depth.

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Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) 'Jackie Curtis for New Times magazine' c. 1970 job 474

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Jackie Curtis at 10 East 23rd Street; Jackie Curtis for New Times magazine
c. 1970
Job 474 B, 7 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
Morgan Library & Museum, New York, Peter Hujar Collection, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

The bond Hujar formed with Warhol “superstar” Jackie Curtis reflected, in part, their mutual rejection of familiar sexual identities. Curtis told The New York Times, “I’m not a boy, not a girl, not a faggot, not a drag queen, not a transsexual – just me, Jackie.”

This contact sheet comes from the session for a 1970 New Times magazine feature on New Yorkers who defined their historical moment. The print is from a separate session, which yielded a spread of full-page portraits of Curtis in issue six of Newspaper.

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Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
The Cockettes at 10 East 23rd Street
1971
Job 519
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

In November of 1971, the San Francisco troupe, the Cockettes, came to New York to perform at the Anderson Theatre. Peter Hujar photographed them in his Madison Square studio and on the street outside the theatre – solo, in pairs and trios, and in large groups. In all he shot over fifty rolls of film. Pictured here [below] is Fayette, one of the co-founders of the avant-garde experimental theatre troupe.

Many of these photographs ran in the final issue of Newspaper, which was devoted entirely to the group. Though the Cockettes’ shaggy performance style was roundly scorned by New York audiences, photographing them crystallised a theme – the stance of “genderfuck,” a madcap travesty of gender identities – that Hujar would explore in his work for the rest of his life.

Large print label text

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Fayette
1971
Gelatin silver print
Image: 14 11/16 x 14 11/16 inches (37.3 x 37.3cm)
Sheet: 19 7/8 x 15 7/8 inches (50.5 x 40.4cm)
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York
Gift of Stephen Koch
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive /

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) 'Rick Derringer and Patti Smith' 1971, Job 517

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Patti Smith and Rick Derringer
1971
Job 517, 11 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

At the turn of the 1970s, much of Peter Hujar’s paying work revolved around rock music publicity, including gigs ranging from concert coverage to record cover art to music magazine features. As documented in his contact sheets, Hujar frequently merged and swapped traditional gender codes in the presentation of the performers he photographed, such as Rick Derringer and Patti Smith pictured here.

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This spring, the Morgan Library & Museum presents Hujar:Contact, an exhibition exploring the life, times, and creative evolution of photographer Peter Hujar (1934 – 1987). On view from May 22 through October 25, 2026, the exhibition features more than 110 contact sheets and 20 enlargements from the Morgan’s collection of Peter Hujar’s works.

Highlights include portraits of artists and performers such as Marsha P. Johnson, Jackie Curtis, Patti Smith, Candy Darling, John Zorn, and Ethyl Eichelberger, as well as Hujar’s creative collaborators and lovers, including Paul Thek, Joseph Raffael, and David Wojnarowicz. Hujar’s distinctive portraiture, alongside rare prints of his street photography, interiors, and landscapes, reveals the unflinching eye he cast upon a vast range of subjects.

In 2013, the Morgan acquired the 5,783 black-and-white contact sheets Hujar possessed at the time of his death, along with two notebooks, or “job books,” in which he recorded his photographic assignments and personal projects from 1954 until 1985. Together, these materials provide a detailed record of an artist who left no written reflection on his work, yet carefully preserved the traces of his decades-long photographic life. Hujar:Contact foregrounds the material processes that structured photographic practice in the era of film and chemical printing. Visitors to the exhibition will be transported to Hujar’s darkroom, invited to study these small images with the same attentiveness and care that Hujar himself brought to them.

“Following our 2018 exhibition Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, which explored the full length and breadth of Hujar’s artistic career for the first time, Hujar:Contact turns to his creative process,” said Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director of the Morgan Library & Museum. “This exhibition advances the Morgan’s commitment to collecting and interpreting contemporary photography and to broadening appreciation for a medium that is both immediate and reflective.”

The exhibition elevates the contact sheet, traditionally a working tool, into an art object worthy of close visual reading in its own right. Each sheet reproduces an entire roll of film, allowing viewers to follow Hujar’s eye through a series of exposures. Many of the contact sheets include Hujar’s own handwritten notes, marks, and annotations, which indicate his changing approach to cropping and printing and elucidate the editorial decisions behind each final image.

“Contact sheets reveal an intimate history of Hujar’s habits, inspirations, and happy accidents – the intricacies hidden behind a final print,” said Joel Smith, curator of the exhibition and Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography at the Morgan. “Hujar:Contact illuminates the physical process that was central to his artistic practice.”

Reproduced at large scale on the walls are dozens of pages from Hujar’s job books, which provide the closest thing to a chronological account of his career. The earliest surviving page dates to 1954, when Hujar was just beginning to photograph friends and loved ones in New York. Over the following decades, the notebooks grew into a numbered record of hundreds of shoots, following the artist from his job as a studio assistant in the 1950s to his work in fashion and music journalism in the late 1960s, and ultimately to the independent portrait practice that defined his mature work in downtown New York.

By the mid-1970s, Hujar had become a central figure in the cultural life of New York’s East Village. Working primarily with a medium-format camera that allowed him to maintain eye contact with his sitters, Hujar cultivated an atmosphere in which photographer and subject shaped the image together. Visitors will gain a vivid sense of this collaborative process through the presentation of contact sheets alongside never-before-exhibited prints, unveiling how individual portraits emerged from a give and-take process grounded in patience and mutual curiosity.

Hujar:Contact is organised by Joel Smith, Richard L. Menschel Curator and Department Head of Photography.

The exhibition is accompanied by an eponymous catalogue that offers an authoritative and visually rich account of Peter Hujar’s creative process, featuring nearly five hundred reproductions of his contact sheets. Drawing from the Morgan Library & Museum’s extensive archive of more than five thousand original contact sheets and two job books created between 1954 and 1985, the publication provides an unprecedented look into the artist’s working methods.

Critical texts by Joel Smith establish a chronology of Hujar’s contact sheets, presenting a portrait of an artist developing, experimenting with, and refining his practice against the tumultuous cultural politics and sea changes of gay life conveyed by the words “Stonewall” and “AIDS.”

Throughout his career, Hujar recorded more than a thousand photo shoots in his job books. A complete transcription and annotation of these materials by Olivia McCall lends the volume unique scholarly value.

Published by the Morgan Library & Museum in association with MACK, the catalogue is available for pre-order in the Morgan Shop for $70.

Press release from the Morgan Library & Museum

1973-76: Life and Death

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) 'Seven-part movement executed by Robyn Brentano, S. K. Dunn, and Charles Dennis of Robert Wilson’s Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds' 1973, job 539

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds: 7-part movement executed by Robyn Brentano, S.K. Dunn, and Charles Dennis
1973
Job 539, 9 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

In 1971 Hujar was introduced to theatre impresario Robert Wilson’s company, the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, through the involvement of Ann Wilson, Robyn Brentano, and other friends. His first photographs of the troupe record their ritual-like rehearsal of the “seven-part movement” that figured in the productions The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud (1969) and The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973). Hujar’s constant profile-view perspective lends the session’s contact sheets the hypnotic regularity of a score by Wilson’s frequent collaborator, Philip Glass.

Large print label text

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Christopher Street Liberation Day Fair with John Waters and Jackie Curtis
1973
Job 577
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

As seen in the central frame of this contact sheet, Peter Hujar often turned the camera over to others, inviting them to take a picture of him. Because he rarely made prints of these frames, it is possible that the gesture was intended as much to ease others’ nervousness around the camera as to produce a portrait of himself.

The 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day Fair – the forerunner of the Pride March, from which this contact sheet originates – was notable for Sylvia Rivera’s historic speech in Washington Square Park, in which she advocated for members of the gay community who were homeless or incarcerated.

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Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Candy Darling in room 1423, Cabrini Health Care Center
1973
Job 587, 6 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Peter Hujar’s famous photograph, “Candy Darling on Her Deathbed,” [below] printed from the top-right frame marked with a dot, appeared in the New York Daily News shortly after her death in March 1974, and in several other publications soon thereafter. Perhaps due to this wide public circulation, Hujar excluded the image from his 1976 book “Portraits in Life and Death.”

Before checking into Cabrini Health Care Center for testing in September 1973, Warhol superstar Candy Darling asked Hujar to make a portrait “for my fans.” The contact sheet reveals the most iconic still of Candy lying languidly in bed, surrounded by movement, laughter, and theatricality.

Hujar later described their session as a kind of performance, recalling that Candy was “playing every death scene from every movie.” He mirrored this cinematic sensibility in his composition and printing process, shaping the final image so that the dreary details of the room—fluorescent light, hospital bedding, a single rose – are transformed into an icon reminiscent of Hollywood’s golden-age portraiture.

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Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Candy Darling on Her Deathbed
1973
Gelatin silver print
Collection of Richard L. and Ronay Menschel
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Man and Woman at Windows, Briarcliff Manor
1974
From Jill Johnston, Winnie Johnston, Rick Brintzenhofe, and Robyn Brentano at Briarcliff Manor, New York, 1974 (Job 607, 5 sheets)
Gelatin silver print
Image: 13 7/8 x 13 11/16 inches (35.3 x 34.8cm)
Sheet: 16 13/16 x 13 7/8 inches (42.7 x 35.3cm)
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York
Gift of Stephen Koch
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Man and Woman portrays Hujar’s friends Robyn Brentano and Rick Brintzenhofe in a room at the home of friends in Briarcliff Manor, New York. As Brentano recalls, she and Brintzenhofe were on the verge of a breakup at the time. Between them hangs a poster of the famous Unicorn in Captivity tapestry (1495-1505) at the Cloisters. Hujar’s symbolically staged scene is anomalous in his work of the time, bearing greater resemblance to his magazine images of a few years earlier.

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Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) 'Self-portraits at 189 Second Avenue' 1974, job 620

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Self-portraits on heel
1974
Job 620, 3 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Hujar’s move into a large, low-rent space at 189 Second Avenue in the 1970s coincided with his decision to give up paid work altogether as he began to pursue more meaningful personal projects. As if trumpeting his arrival at the loft, in this contact sheet Hujar frolics and salutes the camera.

Hujar would live and work in the loft for the remainder of his life until New Year’s Day in 1987, when he received a tragic AIDS diagnosis. He quit abruptly thereafter, and even declined to catch up on his job-book entries for the preceding year’s work. He passed away that November due to related complications.

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Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Vince Aletti and Fran Lebowitz, Morristown, New Jersey
1974
Job 622
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

On a few occasions Fran Lebowitz invited Hujar and Vince Aletti to visit her family home in Morristown, New Jersey, and the three of them stayed overnight. Once, Hujar photographed each of his friends in the beds where they had spent the previous night, Aletti in Fran’s bedroom and Fran in her sister’s. The diaristic nature of the exposures looks ahead to the work of Nan Goldin, which Hujar would point to in the 1980s as a compelling next stage in the medium’s evolution.

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Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Diana Vreeland
1975
Job 655, 7 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

The first page of Peter Hujar’s second job book begins with the heading “FOR BOOK” and the names of several dozen people he photographed for what would become “Portraits in Life and Death” (1976). Hujar’s friend Robyn Brentano, fashion editor Diana Vreeland, and artist/writer Joe Brainard did not make the cut. Of the finished book, Hujar told an interviewer, “In a sense, I’m still a fashion photographer. These people are chic, but in a dark kind of way. Most of them are unknown or maybe known to just a few, but they have all been creative adventurers and possess a certain spirit.” Perhaps he ultimately decided that Vreeland, like Andy Warhol and model Lauren Hutton, was too “known” to fit in. Hujar also appears to have striven to represent variety in his subjects’ age, personal style, gender, vocation, and disposition.

Large label print text

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Joe Brainard
1975
Job 664, 9 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Joe Brainard was an American artist and writer associated with the New York School. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages, collages, drawing, and painting, as well as designs for book and album covers, theatrical sets and costumes.

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) 'Marsha P. Johnson on Christopher Street Pier, Easter' 1976, job 719

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Marsha P. Johnson on Christopher Street Pier, Easter Sunday
1976
Job 719, 12 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Peter Hujar’s engagement with New York’s downtown arts and queer communities is reflected in his photographs of fellow artists, writers, and activists, including Marsha P. Johnson, pictured here. Johnson participated in the Stonewall uprising and became one of the figures most closely associated with the movement that emerged from it.

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1977-80: Recovery

The term “Recovery” aligns with a period of personal realignment and stabilizing focus following years of emotional, financial, and professional instability. During these years, Hujar established a more structured rhythm with his medium, producing intimate, deeply felt portraits of downtown cultural luminaries, friends, and chosen family.

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Electric Cow
1978
From Joseph Hyrkin and animals, Westtown, New York, 1978 (Job 820, 24 sheets)
Gelatin silver print
Image: 14 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches (37.4 x 37.4cm)
Sheet: 19 13/16 x 15 7/8 inches (50.3 x 40.4cm)
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York
Gift of Roy Eddey and Joel Hershey in honor of the Morgan’s Centennial
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

In the early 1970s a former colleague of Hujar’s at Harold Krieger’s studio, Roy Hyrkin, moved with his family to a remote farming area in Orange County, New York. Hujar, who could not drive, visited them when he could get a ride. Roy Hyrkin recalls Hujar’s rare mood of “delight” upon returning from morning walks with ten-year-old Joseph to photograph animals, including the cows Joseph milked at the dairy next door. Farm animals had been a constant presence during Hujar’s childhood at his grandparents’ house in Trenton, New Jersey. Friends who saw him photograph animals recall that he spoke to them in the same manner he used during any portrait session with a person.

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Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Pascal (Feet), Paris
1980
Gelatin silver print
Image: 14 9/16 x 14 3/4 inches (37 x 37.4cm)
Sheet: 19 7/8 x 15 15/16 inches (50.5 x 40.5cm)
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York
Gift of Stephen Koch
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Among the ways that Hujar expanded his approach to portraiture was by zeroing in on parts of the body besides the face. In Paris for the opening of a gallery show of his work in 1980, he photographed the feet of the young fashion designer Pascal Humbert (misidentified in Hujar’s job book as “Imbert”), as well as close-ups of his face and scarred torso.

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1981-87: Shadowlands

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) 'David Wojnarowicz II' 1981 job 936

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
David Wojnarowicz #2
1981
Job 936, 8 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

The defining relationship of Peter Hujar’s final years was with David Wojnarowicz. When they met, at the Bar on Second Avenue in January of 1981, Wojnarowicz was writing poetry and playing music, and Hujar encouraged him to focus on his visual art.

In his job book Hujar distinguishes between two early sessions, “David W #1” and “David W #2.” On the latter date (seen here), he used bounced light that emphasises the volume of Wojnarowicz’s features and hints at an inner life that was as important to the portraitist as his outward appearance.

Large print label text

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Kiki Smith at 189
1984
Job 1052
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

The eyes dominate in Hujar’s portraits of artist Kiki Smith, in which he employs a softened version of the chiaroscuro lighting technique he evolved a few years earlier. A variant on this photograph is one of several portraits by Hujar, David Armstrong, and Nan Goldin that Cookie Mueller used for “before and after” illustrations in her book How to Get Rid of Pimples (1984), with hand-drawn dots added by the author to the “before” image of each sitter’s face.

Large print label text

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Kiki Smith (2)
1984
Gelatin silver print
Image: 14 5/8 x 14 3/4 inches (37.2 x 37.5cm)
Sheet: 19 7/8 x 15 7/8 inches (50.5 x 40.3cm)
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York
Gift of Stephen Koch
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Caven Point, New Jersey, with David Wojnarowicz
1984
Job 1063, 12 sheets
Contact sheet
11 x 8 1/2 inches
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Postindustrial Queens, windblown Caven Point, and burned-out, riot-torn Newark were places that appealed to Wojnarowicz’s and Hujar’s attunement to disaster. Their fatalism reflected the neglect and abuse each of them had known in childhood, as well as their consciousness of an AIDS crisis that only showed signs of deepening. Assigned in 1983 to make a cover photograph for the Village Voice about gay dread and mourning, Hujar had enlisted Wojnarowicz as his model. Their shared experience of abandoned locales was formative both for their work and for their deepening friendship.

Large print label text

Woven throughout Peter Hujar’s photographs is a profound sense of fatality about the world. This bleakness in his art reflects both the abuse he faced as a child and his concern about the AIDS crisis which, at the time, only showed signs of worsening.

It was with this in mind that he set out with David Wojnarowicz, a creative he had taken on as mentee, to shoot a cover photograph for a Village Voice issue on gay dread and mourning. The pair visited several locations in post-industrial Queens, windblown Caven Point, and riot-torn Newark that appealed to their eye for disaster. Trips to abandoned locations like these proved to be formative for both their work and friendship alike.

Text from the Morgan Library & Museum Facebook page

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Road and Power Line, New Jersey
1984
From Caven Point, New Jersey, with David Wojnarowicz, 1984 (Job 1063, 12 sheets)
Gelatin silver print
Image: 14 9/16 x 14 3/4 inches (37 x 37.4cm)
Sheet: 19 13/16 x 15 7/8 inches (50.4 x 40.3cm)
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection
Gift of Stephen Koch
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
John Zorn
1986
From John Zorn, 1986 (No job number, 9 sheets)
Gelatin silver print
Image: 9 x 8 1/16 inches (22.8 x 22.7cm)
Sheet: 13 7/8 x 10 7/8 inches (35.3 x 27.6cm)
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection
Gift of Stephen Koch
Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York
© The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

By the time of his final exhibition in early 1986, Peter Hujar’s health was in decline. He continued working for the rest of the year, but upon receiving a diagnosis of AIDS in early 1987, he quit abruptly, even declining to catch up on his job-book entries for the previous year’s work. Therefore, his final finished images, including these sensitive portraits of composer John Zorn, are dateable to 1986 by the very absence of detailed information about them.

Large print label text

Hujar:Contact book cover

“Less a monograph than an exposed nervous system: strips of images accumulating into something restless and alive, all hesitation, process, and thought still developing in the tray. … Across the pages of Hujar:Contact, [the images] become immersive. … the experience is less that of viewing discrete photographs than inhabiting the rhythm of Hujar’s looking.”

Marina Vitaglione, Blind Magazine

Hujar:Contact explores the Morgan Library & Museum’s extensive archive of original contact sheets and job books made by the beloved photographer Peter Hujar between 1954 and 1987, which come together to form an enthralling visual document of the artist’s creative process. Hujar’s empathetic eye focused in on varying subjects – crowds of protest, damaged relics, farm animals – but above all he was preoccupied with making portraits of the overlapping circles of artists, writers, and underground luminaries he moved within in New York. Accompanying critical texts by Joel Smith establish a chronology of Hujar’s contact sheets, presenting an artist developing, experimenting with, and refining his practice against the tumultuous cultural politics and sea changes of gay life conveyed by the words ‘Stonewall’ and ‘AIDS’.

Throughout his career Hujar recorded more than a thousand photo shoots in his job books. These documents, which are transcribed and annotated in Hujar:Contact, illuminate the contact sheets, rich in never-before-seen images as well as the earliest iterations of Hujar’s most iconic works, including portraits of Susan Sontag, David Wojnarowicz, Candy Darling, Gary Indiana, Fran Lebowitz, and Paul Thek. This volume provides captivating insight into a master at work, forming an immersive chronicle of Hujar’s poignant efforts to connect, through photography, with the creative communities that defined his life, outlook, and art.

Text from the Amazon website

The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY
Phone: (212) 685-0008

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Thursday, Saturday – Sunday: 10.30am – 5pm
Friday: 10.30am – 7pm
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Exhibition: ‘Light, Paper, Process: Revolutionizing Photography’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 14th April – 6th September, 2015

Curator: Virginia Heckert, Curator of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum

Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitsky) (American, 1890-1976) 'Untitled (Smoke)' 1928 from the exhibition 'Light, Paper, Process: Revolutionizing Photography' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles, April - Sept, 2015

Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitsky) (American, 1890-1976)
Untitled (Smoke)
1928
Gelatin silver print
24.6 x 19.8cm (9 11/16 x 7 13/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Man Ray Trust ARS-ADAG

These days, photography can be anything your imagination, concept and process desires…

Whether that makes for interesting / lasting (ie. memorable) / good, (post)photographic outcomes is up to you to decide.

Marcus

Many thankx to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Chargesheimer (Karl Heinz Hargesheimer) (German, 1924-1971) 'Picturesque' 1949 from the exhibition 'Light, Paper, Process: Revolutionizing Photography' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles, April - Sept, 2015

Chargesheimer (Karl Heinz Hargesheimer) (German, 1924-1971)
Picturesque
1949
Gelatin silver print
49.5 x 39.6cm (19 1/2 x 15 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Henry Holmes Smith (American, 1909-1986)
Man and Woman
1976
Dye imbibition print
33.2 x 26.2cm (13 1/16 x 10 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the Smith Family Trust
© J. Paul Getty Trust

Edmund Teske (American, 1911-1996)
Leaves on Glass, Topanga Canyon, California
1952; print 1960s
Gelatin silver duotone solarized print
35.4 x 27.9cm (13 15/16 x 11 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Edmund Teske Archives/Laurence Bump and Nils Vidstrand, 2001

Alison Rossiter (American, b. 1953)
Gevaert Gevarto 47, exact expiration date unknown, about 1960s, processed 2013 (#37)
2013
Four gelatin silver print
Each image: 10.8 x 8.3cm (4 1/4 x 3 1/4 in.)
Courtesy of the artist and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
© Alison Rossiter

Chris McCaw (American, b. 1971)
Sunburned GSP #202 (San Francisco Bay)
2008
Gelatin silver print
37.5 x 47.6cm (14 3/4 x 18 3/4 in.)
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum Purchase
© Chris McCaw

Pierre Cordier (Belgian, b. 1933)
Chemigram II
1976
Gelatin silver print
23.8 x 17.9cm (9 3/8 x 7 1/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SABAM, Brussels

From its very beginnings in the 19th century, photography has been shaped by the desire of the artist to continually explore and expand its possibilities through experimentation. Taking that spirit of invention and discovery as a point of departure, some artists today have chosen to distill photography to its most essential components of light-sensitivity and the chemical processing of photographic papers, challenging viewers to see the medium anew. Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography, on view at the Getty Center April 14-September 6, 2015, features the work of seven contemporary artists – Alison Rossiter, Marco Breuer, James Welling, Lisa Oppenheim, Chris McCaw, John Chiara, and Matthew Brandt – all of whom have created inventive photographs that reveal aspects of their making (or unmaking).

The artists in the exhibition utilise an extensive array of practices – often achieved through trial and error, accident, or chance – that shift the understanding of photography from a medium that accurately records the world to one that revels in its materiality. Whether they use handmade cameras or none at all, work with expired papers or toxic chemicals, the images remain latent until processed, fixed, or otherwise coaxed from the paper.

“Each of the artists in this exhibition engages in some way with the process by which the photographic medium captures and transmutes light into a two-dimensional image on paper,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “But rather than seeing this process as something to be ‘perfected,’ or even neutralised, they exploit its ability to be manipulated and deconstructed, thus collapsing process and product into a single creative activity. I am particularly pleased that the Getty Museum Photographs Council has provided funds to acquire works by Matthew Brandt, Marco Breuer, John Chiara, and Allison Rossiter for our permanent collection that are included in the exhibition.”

The exhibition begins with an overview of 20th-century practices that were experimental in nature, featuring works by Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Nathan Lerner, Edmund Teske, and others. The renewed interest of artists of this period in techniques such as camera-less photograms, chemigrams, and solarisation serves as inspiration for today’s artists. Each of the subsequent galleries in the Getty Museum’s Center for Photographs will be dedicated to the work of one of the seven featured contemporary artists, and follows a progression from abstract, camera-less works to representative images made with custom-built cameras.

“This exhibition is an excellent opportunity to feature the work of living artists alongside earlier photographs from our permanent collection,” says Virginia Heckert, department head of the Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs and curator of the exhibition. “By focusing on work of a more experimental nature, visitors will be reminded that the exploration of materiality and process has been an important aspect of photography since its inception and continues to motivate and inspire artists working with the medium today.”

Alison Rossiter (American, born 1953) takes a minimalist approach to the materials she uses to create her photographic works. She does not use a camera, film, or light, but instead only uses unprocessed sheets of expired gelatin silver paper and photographic chemicals in the darkroom. Through the simple acts of immersing or dipping a sheet of paper in developer or pouring and pooling developer onto the paper’s surface, she achieves a rich array or results. Some suggest faint impressions of primitive mark-making, others resemble landscapes, and still others call to mind abstract painting of the mid-20th-century.

Working since the early 1990s without a camera or film, Marco Breuer (German, born 1966) subjects light-sensitive paper to various acts that abrade, burn, or scrape away the emulsion layer. Completely nonrepresentational, his “photographs” look like no others; they elicit the hues and textures of rare metals, mineral deposits, or oil spills, and display marks ranging from fine incisions and abrasions to scar-like burns and gashes. His deliberate misuse of black-and-white and photographic papers is the starting point for a negotiation between the paper as recording material, the hand, and the tools employed.

James Welling (American, born 1951) spent the first ten years of his career exploring painting, sculpture, performance art, video art, conceptual art, and installation before he committed to thinking of himself as a photographer. For the past four decades, he has explored photography, from documentary to experimental, with and without a camera, using black-and-white, colour, and Polaroid films and papers, as well as digital files and printing. Since 1995 he has worked increasingly with colour, filters, and camera-less photography. Three bodies of recent work presented in the exhibition include variations on the photogram, chemigram, and printing-out process.

Influenced by her background in structural/materialist filmmaking, Lisa Oppenheim (American, born 1975) is interested in exploring the ways in which a photograph can record both its subject and the process by which it was made. In three bodies of work dating from 2010 to present, she enlists the very entities depicted in the negatives – the sun, the moon, and smoke / fire – in the act of exposing them. Although they sound scientific, the titles of two of these bodies of work, Heliograms and Lunagrams, are made up, combining the name of the camera-less photogram technique and the source of light by which the enlarged negatives have been contact-printed.

Chris McCaw (American, born 1971) establishes an immediate, visceral relationship between his subject, the sun, and his process, which involves loading photographic paper directly into the camera. The photographs in his Sunburn series record the sun’s movement, which literally sears its path into the paper in the form of dots, lines, or arcs, depending on its position, the weather conditions, and the length of the exposure(s). McCaw uses customised cameras outfitted with vintage military lenses pointed directly at the sun to function like a magnifying glass that burns through the emulsion layer and paper base, leaving behind singe marks and solarised passages.

John Chiara’s (American, born 1971) large-scale colour prints convey a hands-on – rather than pristine, mechanised – aesthetic. For the past decade his subjects have been both uninhabited landscapes and the built environment. He works with large custom-built cameras that he loads with colour photographic paper that he then processes himself by pouring chemicals into a six-foot-long section of PVC sewer pipe, sealing the tube, and then rolling it back and forth on the floor. Irregular streaks and drips characterise his prints, as do areas of overexposure and underexposure, flare from light leaks, and unevenly saturated colours.

Matthew Brandt (American, born 1982) has created diverse bodies of work, some of which are realised with photographic means and others that are more tangentially related to photographic images, techniques, or ideas. He may begin with a photograph that he has made with a 4 x 5-inch view camera, a digital camera, or his iPhone, one that he has sourced from archives in public libraries, or one that he has clicked and dragged from Ebay. His fascination with early photographic processes has led him to experiment with salted paper prints, gum bichromate prints, and heliographs, examples of which will be on view. Brandt’s interest in both photographic/visual and the physical/material forms of representation has led him to bring the two together, incorporating physical elements from his subjects into his photographic representations of them.

Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography, is on view April 14-September 6, 2015 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center. The exhibition is curated by Virginia Heckert, department head of the Museum’s Department of Photographs. A related publication of the same title will be produced by Getty Publications.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Alison Rossiter (American, b. 1953)
Haloid Platina, exact expiration date unknown, about 1915, processed 2010
2010
Gelatin silver print
Image (each): 21.6 x 16.5cm (8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Alison Rossiter

Alison Rossiter (American, b. 1953)
Fuji gaslight, exact expiration date unknown, about 1920s, processed 2010
2010
Gelatin silver print
30.5 x 25.4cm (12 x 10 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Alison Rossiter

Alison Rossiter (American, b. 1953)
Kilbourn Acme Kruxo, exact expiration date unknown, about 1940s, processed 2013
2013
Gelatin silver print
12.7 x 17.8cm (5 x 7 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Alison Rossiter

Marco Breuer (German, b. 1966)
Untitled (Heat/Gun)
2001
Gelatin silver paper, burned
27.9 x 21.6cm (11 x 8 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Marco Breuer

Marco Breuer (German, b. 1966)
Untitled (C-62)
2002
Chromogenic paper, exposed and abraded
35.6 x 27.9cm (14 x 11 in.)
Courtesy of the artist and Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
© Marco Breuer

Marco Breuer (German, b. 1966)
Spin (C-824)
2008
Chromogenic paper, embossed and scratched
34.6 x 27cm (13 5/8 x 10 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Marco Breuer

James Welling (American, b. 1951)
Water
2009
Chromogenic print
60.3 x 50.2cm (23 3/4 x 19 3/4 in.)
Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles
© James Welling

James Welling (American, b. 1951)
Water
2009
Chromogenic print
58.7 x 49.5cm (23 1/8 x 19 1/2 in.)
Courtesy of the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles
© James Welling

James Welling (American, b. 1951)
Chemical
2013
Chemigram on chromogenic paper
35.6 x 27.9cm (14 x 11 in.)
Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London
© James Welling

Lisa Oppenheim (American, b. 1975)
Heliograms July 8, 1876 / October 16, 2011
2011
Gelatin silver print exposed with sunlight, toned
30 x 27.9cm (11 13/16 x 11 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Lisa Oppenheim

Lisa Oppenheim (American, b. 1975)
A Handley Page Halifax of No. 4 Group flies over the suburbs of Caen, France, during a major daylight raid to assist the Normandy land battle. 467 aircraft took part in the attack, which was originally intended to have bombed German strongpoints north of Caen, but the bombing area was eventually shifted nearer the city because of the proximity of Allied troops to the original targets. The resulting bombing devastated the northern suburbs, 1944/2012
2012
Gelatin silver print
Framed (approx.): 71.1 x 86.4 cm (28 x 34 in.)
Overall: Five gelatin silver prints (photograms)
Overall (approx.): 24 × 110″ (61 × 279.4 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fund for the Twenty-First Century
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
© Lisa Oppenheim

Lisa Oppenheim (American, b. 1975)
A Handley Page Halifax of No. 4 Group flies over the suburbs of Caen, France, during a major daylight raid to assist the Normandy land battle. 467 aircraft took part in the attack, which was originally intended to have bombed German strongpoints north of Caen, but the bombing area was eventually shifted nearer the city because of the proximity of Allied troops to the original targets. The resulting bombing devastated the northern suburbs, 1944/2012 (detail)
2012
Gelatin silver print
Framed (approx.): 71.1 x 86.4 cm (28 x 34 in.)
Overall: Five gelatin silver prints (photograms)
Overall (approx.): 24 × 110″ (61 × 279.4 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fund for the Twenty-First Century
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
© Lisa Oppenheim

Oppenheim produces experimental films and photograms (photographs made without a camera). In Smoke and related works she uses the techniques of documentary photography to call the premises of the genre into question. She begins with the photo-sharing site Flickr, as a source for images of fire caused by natural or industrial disasters or bombing attacks (such as those over occupied France during World War II), and outputs segments of these pictures to create digital negatives. She then exposes photographic paper through the negatives, using firelight instead of the typical darkroom enlarger as a light source, then develops the photographic paper in solarol, a specially designed developer that creates a solarised effect, reversing lights and darks. The schism between the optical expressiveness of the pictures and the scientism of the captions (which are long, descriptive, and include the date and location of the event), shows that one’s understanding of the world is partial, that photography can only represent the world, and that the documentary genre is ultimately fraught with uncertainty.

Gallery label from New Photography 2013, September 14, 2013 – January 6, 2014, Museum of Modern Art website.

Chris McCaw (American, b. 1971)
Sunburned GSP #609 (San Francisco Bay)
2012
Gelatin silver paper negatives
76.1 x 101.6cm (30 x 40 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Chris McCaw (American, b. 1971)
Sunburned GSP #555 (San Francisco Bay)
2012
Gelatin silver paper negative
20.3 x 25.4cm (8 x 10 in.)
Courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery San Francisco
© Chris McCaw

Chris McCaw (American, b. 1971)
Poly-optic #10
2012
Gelatin silver paper negative
20.3 x 25.4cm (8 x 10 in.)
Collection of Leslie, Judith and Gabrielle Schreyer, Courtesy of Stephen Wirtz Gallery
© Chris McCaw

John Chiara (American, b. 1971)
Longview at Panorama
2007
Dye destruction photograph on Ilfochrome paper
50.8 x 40.6cm (20 x 16 in.)
Rose Gallery and Von Lintel Gallery
© John Chiara

John Chiara (American, b. 1971)
Grandview at Elysian
2012
Dye destruction photographs on Ilfochrome paper
Each image: 85.1 x 71.1cm (33 1/2 x 28 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Trish and Jan de Bont
© John Chiara

John Chiara (American, b. 1971)
Starr King: 30th: Coral
2013
Dye destruction photograph on Ilfochrome paper
83.8 x 71.1cm (33 x 28 in.)
Kerstin Morehead
© John Chiara

John Chiara (American, b. 1971)
Sierra at Edison
2012
Chromogenic photograph on Kodak Professional Endura Metallic paper
127 x 182.9cm (50 x 72 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© John Chiara

Matthew Brandt (American, b. 1982)
00036082-3 “Mathers Department Store, Pasadena, 1971”
2013
Gum bichromate print with dust from AT&T parking structure level 2
110.5 x 143.5cm (43 1/2 x 56 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the artist and M+B
© Matthew Brandt, Source image courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

Matthew Brandt (American, b. 1982)
Rainbow Lake, WY A4
Negative 2012; print 2013
Chromogenic print, soaked in Rainbow Lake water
76.2 x 101.6cm (30 x 40 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Matthew Brandt

Matthew Brandt (American, b. 1982)
Rainbow Lake, WY A20
Negative 2012; print 2013
Chromogenic print, soaked in Rainbow Lake water
76.2 x 101.6cm (30 x 40 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Matthew Brandt

The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049

Opening hours:
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Closed Mondays

The J. Paul Getty Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Eikoh Hosoe – Theatre of Memory’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Exhibition dates: 12th May – 7th August 2011

Many thankx to Susanne Briggs for her help and for AGNSW for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“The camera is generally assumed to be unable to depict that which is not visible to the eye. And yet the photographer who wields it well can depict what lies unseen in his memory.”

Eikoh Hosoe

This exhibition brings together four seminal series by Eikoh Hosoe, a leading figure in modern Japanese photography. Taken over five decades, The butterfly dream 1960-2005, Kamaitachi 1965-1968 and Ukiyo-e projections 2002-2003 are driven by Hosoe’s longstanding fascination for the revolutionary dance movement butoh and for its charismatic founders, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Together these series epitomise his unique style, which combines photography with elements of theatre, dance, film and traditional Japanese art, and uses mythology, metaphor and symbolism. Using the latest digital technology, Hosoe prints his photographs on washi paper, mounting them in the traditional Japanese manner as scrolls and folding screens, thereby suggesting a new way of ‘reading’ his series as a continuous narrative. Hosoe’s interest in examining the beauty and strength of the human body is best seen in his acclaimed series of extremely abstract nudes, Embrace 1969-1970. The models are butoh dancers associated with Hijikata.

For over fifty years, internationally acclaimed Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe has been producing cutting edge works demonstrating a unique mastery of the photographic medium. Early on in his career he abandoned the documentary style prevalent in the post-war years and produced photographs that breathed a sense of experimentation and freedom into photography. By calling on mythology, metaphor and symbolism he created images that broke the bounds of traditional photography. Hosoe developed a unique style situated at the crossroads of several different art forms, combining photography with elements of theatre, dance, film and traditional Japanese art.

From the early days of his career Hosoe’s destiny became linked to butoh, the revolutionary performance movement formed in post-war Japan. His close relationship to Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the two pivotal figures of butoh dance, forms the basis for his seminal series such as Kamaitachi, Embrace, The butterfly dream and Ukiyo-e projections, included in this exhibition.

This exhibition also highlights Hosoe’s extraordinary creativity and mastery of photographic printing techniques. Having experimented with both film-based and digital techniques to develop new methods of photographic expression, in recent years, he has started to use digital printing technologies on Japanese handmade paper (washi) and mounts his works in the form of traditional Japanese scrolls and screens. These ‘photo-scrolls’ provide a fascinating new reading of Hosoe’s work and underline his commitment to push the boundaries of photographic expression.

Hosoe gained recognition in the late 1950s when he began to develop his close-ups of the human body. Embrace, a series of black-and-white, abstract nude photographs, encapsulates Hosoe’s strive for originality in this photographic genre.

Through the novelist, Yukio Mishima, Hosoe was to meet Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the founders of Butoh dance. After seeing Hijikata’s performance, adapted from the novel Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours) by Mishima in a small Tokyo theatre, Hosoe was inspired and began photographing the Butoh dancer, a collaboration which continued for many years and culminated in the series Kamaitachi (1965-1968). This series, shot on various locations in the rural Tohoku region, integrated elements of dance, theatre and documentary into a cinematic work that aimed to recreate and dramatise Hosoe’s childhood memories.

Hosoe’s association with Butoh also led him to photograph the renowned Butoh performer, Kazuo Ohno. Released in 2006 in celebration of Ohno’s 100th birthday, the series The butterfly dream is a poignant visual documentary of Ohno’s artistic development over 46 years. While they retain the drama intrinsic to Butoh, Hosoe’s photographs of Ohno focus in on details of Ohno’s body, the curve of a wrist or a facial expression caught between agony and ecstasy.

Hosoe’s latest colour work, Ukiyo-e Projections, revisits his early work by linking it into ukiyo-e and Butoh dance. This series was born when he found out that the experimental Asbestos Dance Studio, founded by Hijikata and his wife, was to close in 2003 after forty years of activity. Upon hearing about the closure, Hosoe felt the need to pay a photographic tribute “to express gratitude for all that it had produced.” Ukiyo-e Projections was completed on stage at the Studio during a series of sessions in 2002 and 2003. For this series Hosoe created what he calls a “photographic theatre,” projecting a mixture of his own photographs with ukiyo-e prints on to the white-painted bodies of young Butoh dancers. The series explores many of the themes that recur in his work: sexuality, the human form and movement.

Eikoh Hosoe: Theatre of Memory highlights Hosoe’s mastery of photography through his four seminal series, Embrace, Kamaitachi, The Butterfly Dream and Ukiyo-e Projections, showing Hosoe’s sensibility for theatre, performance and the human body. It further demonstrates his creativity and mastery of photographic printing techniques. Throughout his career Hosoe, a master printer, has experimented with both film-based and digital techniques to develop new methods of photographic expression. In recent years, he has combined new printing technologies with Japanese washi paper to present his work on traditionally made silk screens and scrolls.

This is the first solo exhibition of Hosoe’s works in Australia. Hosoe, 77, is currently completing a new series of works on the sculpture of Auguste Rodin. The exhibition Eikoh Hosoe – Theatre of memory is realised in collaboration with Studio Equis, France.

Text from the Art Gallery of New South Wales website

Photographer Eikoh Hosoe on his work and inspirations

Eikoh Hosoe – a leading figure in modern Japanese photography – came to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to launch the exhibition ‘Eikoh Hosoe: theatre of memory’. In this video he discusses his work and inspirations.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024) 'Kazuo Ohno' 1994 from the series 'The butterfly dream' 1960-2005

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kazuo Ohno
1994
From the series The butterfly dream 1960-2005
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

The Butterfly Dream

The butterfly dream – a collection of photographs taken over a period of 46 years – represents Hosoe’s homage to the charismatic butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno. It was published as a book, which was released on 27 October 2006 in celebration of Ohno’s 100th birthday.

Originally an instructor in physical education and performer of modern dance, Ohno befriended Tatsumi Hijikata in the 1950s and became a pivotal fi gure in the development of the butoh performance movement. Ohno’s poetic dance style stems from his belief in the transcendental nature of human experience, that the human body has a memory of sensations and knows no limits of self-expression.

Following closely his friend’s extremely long and successful career – Ohno continued to perform late into his 90s – Hosoe has captured some of the most poignant and magical moments in the history of butoh. In honour of Ohno’s long-held conviction in the importance of achieving freedom of body and mind, Hosoe named his photographic exploration of Ohno’s unique art after the famous Daoist allegory in which the philosopher Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, but once awake, wondered if he was a man dreaming to be a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming to be Zhuangzi.

Centered on the Japanese myth of Kamaitatchi, a mythical folkloric monster believed to have existed in rural Japan, these photographs were created collaboratively by the photographer Eikoh Hosoe and the choreographer and dancer Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-86) over several years in the late 1960s. The famed choreographer, who established the abstract dance style of Butoh, performed in front of Hosoe’s camera, enacting the movement of the monster Kamaitachi.

Hosoe captured Hijikata’s transformation into Kamaitachi as they traveled from Tokyo to a small farming village in Yamagata in the Tohoku region of Japan. Often thought to be a weasel, Kamaitachi appears in a whirlwind to cut its victims with a sickle, but his cuts neither draw blood nor cause pain. In the village, Hijikata ran around in a rice field, interacted with villagers and farmers, and played with children. The artists stated that their collaboration in the rural Tohoku region (where the both artists were born) was their symbolic departure from the increasingly modernised capital city Tokyo while they had worked professionally.

Text from the Minneapolis Institute of Art website

Kamaitachi

Eikoh Hosoe’s long association with the revolutionary performance movement butoh came about through his encounter in 1959 with one of its founders, Tatsumi Hijikata. Hosoe collaborated with Hijikata on several series including Kamaitachi, which is acknowledged as the finest illustration of Hosoe’s hybrid photographic style, combining performance and documentary with a dramatic, virile aesthetic that embodies the founding principles of Hijikata’s ankoku butoh or ‘dance of darkness’.

The dramatic and intense energy that Hijikata generated with his dance not only captured Hosoe’s imagination but also opened up new ways for the young photographer to approach themes such as sexuality, gender and the human body.

Driven by the desire to re-enact his childhood memories when he was evacuated from Tokyo during World War Two, Hosoe had Hijikata perform kamaitachi, the legendary weasel-like demon that haunted the rice paddies in the extremely sparse, rural landscape of the Tohoku region from where they both came. Fusing reality (Hijikata interacting with the landscape and village people) and performance, Hosoe’s ‘subjective documentary’ series opened new ground in Japanese post-war photography.

Kamaitachi: Toward a Vacuum’s Nest

Shuzo Takiguchi

“When we are photographed, our bodies and souls become the victims of sacrifice in a ritual that strips our shadows away. The Eskimo, believed that their spirits resided in their shadows and that shamans had the power to steal them. Sir James George Frazer’s Golden Bough is not the only work to recount the dazzling drama of fate, or of life and death, that unfolds between man and his shadow.

Like life, death comes and goes – perhaps for a short time, perhaps longer. Narcissus’s story will continue to dominate our lives in ways that will become increasingly complicated over time; however, the camera (or, according to villagers in Sikkim, “the evil eye in a box”) seems to have reduced us, in one fell swoop, to the physics of light and shade. The objective lens seems opened to all of Nature, where all roads lead. The fact is, however, that it turns upside down once in the darkness and then is transformed into Nature.

To what extent were Katsu Kaishu,1 Baudelaire, and other luminaries of the early modern era who posed before the camera – tenuously sustained by their recognition of Nature amid a strange confusion of affectation and narcissism – aware of the evil lurking in the lens? Whatever the case, we will eventually see that, like the naked eye, the lens exists always “in its savage state.”2 We are seldom aware of the bizarre fact (or perhaps we just accept it as a self-evident truth) that both the thieves of shadows (photographers) and the thieves’ victims (subjects) are human beings.

I find it almost impossible to believe that the camera could truly capture, for example, the desire of a bird in flight at a certain moment or at any moment. All too often, the photographer unknowingly loses sight of reality, and the reality runs or rolls away, just outside the frame. Or, surprisingly, reality may be there in a corner of the image, invisible and therefore completely unnoticed. And so here I am reminded of Man Ray’s trenchant modern maxim: “Photography is not art.”

Before we even look at the Kamaitachi images, I want to stress the importance of distinguishing them from the generic concept referred to as staged photography. They are strictly, categorically, different from posed photographs of modern narcissists. If Hosoe had not met Tatsumi Hijikata, the phenomenal butoh master, he could not have created this extraordinary series. Hijikata is a man who – metaphorically speaking – can transmogrify in an instant into a phantasmagorical bird. This is not even theatrical photography, but rather a rare instance in which the camera obscura becomes a theater. And it is the paradoxical existence of the camera – which can photograph a vast void when we mean to capture a concrete object – that proves to be a stroke of luck for Hijikata, the master of movement.

Like the lens, Hijikata is a unique dancer, always aware that the “eye exists in its savage state.”3 His “dance experience” is never a matter of leaping across a stage, pretending to be a swan: if a bird is what he has in mind, Hijikata becomes a raven. The raven plunges to the ground far below the stage. Then it runs, if it wants to run, or flies, if it wants to fly. For Hijikata, hasn’t the paradoxical vacuum dwelling in the camera become a divine machine at a certain moment? Then, voluntarily or involuntarily, we may reach the lights of purgatory, for which we have yearned, beyond the millennia of human history.

At the very least, I see here an inevitable force striving to preserve the relationship between photographer and subject. In all likelihood, no other work approaches the original meaning of the term “happening” (however simplified it may be in this case) as closely as this one. Tatsumi Hijikata uses his dance artistry to abruptly penetrate the center of the vacuum between time and space, and he descends to the ground closest to the place where we were born.

He has arrived at the vacuum’s nest, the home of kamaitachi, the “sickle-weasel.”

Today it would seem that the kamaitachi belong to legend and mythology. What are kamaitachi? Memories from my childhood flood back to me: my father was a country doctor, and several times I saw farmers, claiming to have been bitten by a kamaitachi, carried to the threshold of our house. Those were frightening moments, smelling of blood, like the first bolt of lightning streaking across a dark sky. I heard the farmers say they were attacked out of the blue, under a rice-drying rack or an ancient persimmon tree. But no one bore a grudge against that invisible weasel. In fact, a family of actual weasels made their home in the loft of the thatched shed behind our house. Every once in a while, I would see them dart across a field, always taking the shortest path and then disappearing. They lived among people but avoided them. The rumour was that the disreputable little creatures were so wary and agile that they never took the same path twice. I wonder whatever happened to them. One book defines kamaitachi as a laceration from the localised vacuum created by a dust devil. No one really knows the truth. The days of kamaitachi are long gone.

Was kamaitachi a spirit of the soil, a phantom that appeared only to farmers? If so, that invisible flying blade must have been incredibly sharp to leap through the sky and pierce flesh.

It is hard to say whether Tatsumi Hijikata is a spirit of the soil or the air; however, even before we can contemplate the question, he approaches the ground almost vertically and rushes like a gale into a farming village. This village is in a rice-growing district, where Japan’s most inconsistent and absurd social reality anomalously persists. Hijikata appears suddenly, like a hawk diving to the ground – or a kidnapper from heaven.

The god of the rice fields smiles on this scene. A faint trace of that smile is on the kagura theatrical dance mask, but it isn’t the embarrassed smile replayed endlessly on television. It is a smile that could exist among demons, a smile that was present even on a footpath between barren rice fields during a terrible famine, a startling but comical smile from the realm of the unconscious.

At a precise moment, our dancer and photographer approach a timeworn village – their footsteps only faintly audible – and they capture a brief moment in the empty village, where zinnias and other flowers bloom, coated with white soil dust. The entire village, mesmerised like a haunted house, enthrals them.

Is he a hawk that has just landed – or a leaping weasel? It is foolish to ask. It is our dancer who would be wounded. The villagers gaze at him innocently, as though he reminds them of a long-forgotten priest. They smile, without knowing why, at the arrival of the oblivious fool. Their smiles become the same smile of the footpath between rice fields. It is a smile that borders on terror.

A girl smiles like a shrine maiden whom the gods have endowed with evil and innocence in perfect balance. Were the girls born fairies? Sooner or later they will experience the orgasm of life and death. Then they will depart. Will they return to the earth or to the sky? No one knows which path they will take.

In any case, two contradictory, endless journeys await them.

Hairy vacuum! Bloody vacuum! Biting vacuum! You must continue to exist on this earth!

The desire for the heavens will inexorably lead to a desire for the bowels of the earth. Then the excrescence will head for the huge void, and vice versa. The cosmic metamorphosis that this phenomenon seeks will occur, extremely and tangibly. The vacuum theater, too, is part of the evolution.

To arrive at the source of the phantom of ecstasy, we must dig deeper and deeper, day by day.

And the witness is an instantaneous flash.”

by Shuzo Takiguchi
Translated by Connie Prener

1/ Officer credited with the modernisation of Japan’s navy (1823-1899)
2/ Allusion to Andre Breton’s Le Surréalisme et la peinture
3/ Ibid.,

Embrace

First published as a book in 1971, Embrace represents a return to the study of the human body that Hosoe undertook in earlier series such as Man and woman (1959) or Ordeal by roses (1963). In this new body of work, however, he abandoned the strong contrast and dramatic, baroque visual aesthetic in favour of the purity of the human form. Showing abstract fragments of male and female nudes in intimate placement, the series is not merely about eroticism or the dialogue of rivalry between the opposite sexes but is also a celebration of the pure beauty of the human body.

By depersonalising the bodies of his models, Hosoe attempted to reach a universal expression of corporeality. The extreme abstraction of these images focuses the attention on the flesh, which, according to Hosoe’s belief, is the essence of human beings.

The author Yukio Mishima comments on this series: ‘The viscosity which is associated with sex – those earthly odours and temperatures of soft and indeterminately formed internal organs – has been painstakingly removed from these photographs. To me this is a series filled with a hard, athletic beauty. First and foremost, it is about form.’

Ukiyo-e Projections

When Hosoe heard the news that the Asbestos Dance Studio, founded by Tatsumi Hijikata and his wife Akiko Motofuji, was to close in April 2003 after 40 years of activity, he felt the need to pay tribute to the achievements of this experimental studio. With the help of Hijikata’s widow, he organised a series of performances in 2002 and 2003, in which the dancers were asked to coordinate their movements in accordance with images from his own work, as well as from 19th-century Japanese paintings and woodblock prints projected on their naked, white-painted bodies.

The result of this ‘photographic theatre’ was stunning: a mysterious four-dimensional space transcending ordinary space and time was created as the two-dimensional images were projected on the three-dimensional bodies. The idea to use shunga – the erotic woodblock prints by noted ukiyo-e artists such as Utamaro, Hokusai and others – stemmed from Hosoe’s conviction that Hijikata’s archaic, ecstatic dance style had its roots in this particular art genre of the Edo period (1603-1868).

Exploring many of the themes that recur in Hosoe’s work – sexuality, the human form, movement and the passage of time – this series epitomises his unique approach in synthesising photography with various forms of visual and performance arts.