Peter Hujar is one of those all too honest photographers of the 70’s and 80’s NYC scene - the ones who confront reluctant viewers with things like AIDS, homosexuality and drag. It is for this that we are forever grateful.

It all started in Trenton, New Jersey in 1934 when Hujar was born and soon thereafter abandoned by his parents. His Ukrainian grandparents took pity on him and raised him, but Hujar returned to living with his dead-beat mother in his teens. This, of course, didn’t last long as she was no Donna Reed and Hujar began taking care of himself by the time he was 16.

He later attended the School of Industrial Art and was helped by a kind teacher, Daisy Aldan, who pushed him towards commercial photography. This ultimately led him to be the groundbreaking, expository photographer that he was always supposed to be. He relished in the pretty dangerous, crazy cheap New York underworld social scene just as it was hit by the AIDS crisis.

Although he wasn’t the first or the last to create portraits of friends living through and suffering from the AIDS crisis - Robert Mapplethorpe and AA Bronson are still the bosses in that area - Peter Hujar’s photos really hit you in the face. He photographed the piers in New York - semi-demolished, desolate places where the queer scene was but a zygote. He photographed friends like Susan Sontag, David Wojnarowicz, Paul Thek, and Andy Warhol (who included Hujar in one of his screen tests). And finally, he photographed friends on their death beds before and after death. The most intense of already intense photos.

Peter Hujar didn’t gain much recognition in his life mostly because he didn’t deal with dealers or publishers. He has gained a lot of posthumous fame but only put out one book during his life called “Portraits in Life and Death” in 1976 about which he said, “Death’s going to be very ‘in’ this season,” which is dark. Funny…but dark.