'Peter Hujar: Speed of Light' Review: Life, Death and Everything in Between

New York

The intention of “Peter Hujar: Speed of Light” at the Morgan Library & Museum is to establish Hujar (1934-1987) as one of the finest photographers of his generation. Curator

Joel Smith

has succeeded—first by hanging a generous selection of over 140 prints, and then by arranging them in combinations that allow the images to more or less explicate themselves.

There are pictures of artists (“

Peggy Lee,

1974”) and writers (“

Susan Sontag,

1975”); pictures of animals, domestic (“Great Dane, 1981”) and wild (“Snake on a Branch, Germantown, New York, 1985”); pictures of the surfaces of various bodies of water (“Hudson River (5), 1976”), plants and trees (“Bush, Briarcliff Manor, New York, 1974”), dead animals (“Dead Gull, 1985”) and dead people (“Palermo Catacombs (11), 1963”). But the body of work on which Hujar’s reputation will ultimately depend is his portraits from the counterculture scene that flourished in the grungy East Village of Manhattan in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Most involved were, like Hujar, gay, and it was neither his nor their wish to pretend otherwise.

Hujar’s two best-known works are in “Speed of Light”: “

Bruce de Ste. Croix,

1976” and “

Candy Darling

on her Deathbed, 1973.” Ste. Croix, a dancer, sits naked in a simple wooden chair. The chair, a frequent studio prop of Hujar’s, is in a bare space, with a gray floor and a lighter gray wall. The remarkable aspect of the portrait is that the subject holds his considerable erection in his right hand. In his catalog essay,

Philip Gefter

says that “Ste. Croix’s erection poses a set of atavistic challenges to the male viewer,” and lists comparison, fear and “wish to be penetrated.” Another reaction might be that it suggests the exaggerated leather phalluses the actors in ancient Greek and Roman comedy attached to their costumes for droll effect.

But Ste. Croix’s penis is not the sole focus of attention and, in fact, it inclines to his face, which looks downward in something like puzzlement. If he looked at the camera, or if his expression were a leer, it would be an entirely different picture, but the sense of quiet meditation makes it impossible to mistake the image for pornography.

Candy Darling (born

James Lawrence Slattery,

1944) was one of many drag queens Hujar photographed. (There are five pictures of

Ethyl Eichelberger

alone in the show.) Hujar photographed Darling in Columbia University Medical Center, where she died of lymphoma on March 21, 1974. Unlike the spare setting for “Ste. Croix,” the one for “Darling”—with its hospital bed, fluorescent light, and vases of flowers—might be a movie set except for the happenstance of it being real. Darling has on her makeup, including heavy eye shadow and lipstick, and assumes the expression of a tragic diva. The picture is affecting, but is it an example of heroic panache in the face of death or the delusional maintenance of a fictive persona to the very end?

Hujar was an exquisite printer, and one of the great pleasures of “Speed of Life” is seeing his gorgeous prints. Pictures that seem undistinguished in the tritone reproductions of the catalog are compelling in the originals. Hujar held it against

Robert Mapplethorpe

that the latter did not do his own printing. The two were well aware of each other, and each had the parochial ambition to be the ultimate photographer of life in the East Village. Mapplethorpe had a talent for self-promotion and came out ahead. Hujar had a very difficult personality and a habit of alienating the gallery owners, editors, curators and writers he needed to woo if he was to become famous; he preferred poverty to sucking up. But in retrospect, and with others to plead his case, Hujar may do better.

Vicki Goldberg,

in her essay on

Josef Koudelka,

differentiates between artists who concentrate on developing a style and those intent on cultivating a vision. Mapplethorpe was a perfectionist and somewhat limited by his mannerisms; Hujar looked to what was most spontaneous and essential in his subjects. “Cockette

John Rothermel

in Fashion Pose, 1971” has an elegance that may derive from Irving Penn. In “Self-Portrait Jumping (1), 1974,” the photographer caught himself in midair with his left arm akimbo and his right hand raised in a salute; his expression both acknowledges and contradicts the humor of the image. The young woman in “Girl in My Hallway, 1976” lies on the floor at the foot of the stairs, her head against a wall of peeling paint, asleep, drunk or overcome with drugs. She represents the dark side of the East Village, and all those who came looking for glamour, sex, chemical ecstasy, loud music, or an anodyne to boredom and loneliness.

It is time for Peter Hujar to take the place he deserves among his peers.

—Mr. Meyers writes on photography for the Journal. See his photographs at www.williammeyersphotography.com.