Meticulous Narratives
American photographer Peter Hujar (1934-1987) started out in the 1950s as an assistant to commercial photographers but soon became a part of the group of underground artists, poets and musicians who formed the downtown New York art scene of the 1970s and 1980s, and a regular of the creative circles who gravitated around Andy Warhol’s The Factory.
Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, presented by the Hague Museum of Photography in cooperation with the Morgan Library & Museum in New York and Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid, includes over 100 vintage photographs made by Hujar between the mid-1950s and his death. His work is often compared to that of his contemporary Robert Mapplethorpe, with Nan Goldin stating that he deserves a similar level of recognition. Hujar’s images, characteristically black and white portraits, are notable for the contrast between their meticulous composition and the flamboyant characters who people them, including transgender individuals such as Candy Darling, immortalised in Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side.