Exhibition dates: 30th January – 6th April 2025
Curators: Hujar’s biographer John Douglas Millar, Hujar’s close friend the artist and master printer Gary Schneider, with Raven Row’s director Alex Sainsbury
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Ethyl Eichelberger
1979
Gelatin silver print
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Ethyl Eichelberger (American, 1945-1990) was an Obie award-winning drag performer, playwright, and actor.
As with humans, there are certain photographers that I am attracted to more than others due to the abundant energy of their images:
Robert Adams (American, b. 1937)
Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Wynn Bullock (American, 1902-1975)
Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902-2002)
Claude Cahun (French, 1894-1954)
Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Chris Killip (British, 1946-2020)
Mario Giacomelli (Italian, 1925-2000)
Josef Koudelka (Czech-French, b. 1938)
Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
And then there is Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987).
Using contextless backgrounds and simple settings, Hujar’s non-judgmental portraits of friends and lovers rely on the slight twist of the head, the drop of a shadow, the photographer’s look and subjects pose, performance, that curves and bends reality into a presence that is magnetic, magical, eternal.
Hujar’s direct, intimate photographs, suggestive of both love and loss, proffer a mirror to strength and determination / to friendship / to love. His pictures gather, together, a feeling for the freedom of people and places, that essence of being true to yourself (getting to the bone as Harrison Adams puts it). A direct connection between the photographer and subject captured by the camera revealed to the world.
You might have guessed I am in love with his photographs.
Thus, it is a great delight to post on this exhibition at Raven Row in London which looks to be an absolute delight, Hujar’s photographs simply and beautifully presented in the space.
His images reveal themselves over time, expounding his love of life and his intimate and free engagement with the world around him.
That is Hujar’s music, his signature.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Harrison Adams. Photography in the First Person: Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin and Sally Mann (Dissertation). Yale University, 2018 quoted on the “Peter Hujar” Wikipedia page Nd [Online] Cited 14/03/2025
Further postings on this incredible artist on Art Blart can be found at
Exhibition: Peter Hujar: Performance and Portraiture at the Art Institute of Chicago, May – October 2023
Exhibition: Peter Hujar: Speed of Life at Jeu de Paume, Paris, October 2019 – January 2020
Exhibition: Peter Hujar: Speed of Life at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, January – April 2017
Many thankx to Raven Row for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
One aspect of this intimate quality was Hujar’s ability to connect with his sitters. One of his models was quoted after an unsuccessful session as saying:
“We couldn’t ‘reveal’. As an actor you have to reveal. And Hujar’s big thing was that you had to reveal. I know that now, but I didn’t know it at the time. In other words, blistering, blazing honesty directed towards the lens. No pissing about. No posing. No putting anything on. No camping around. Just flat, real who-you-are…You must strip down all the nonsense until you get to the bone. That’s what Peter wanted and that was his great, great talent and skill.”
Harrison Adams. “Peter Hujar: Shamelessness Without Shame,” in Criticism 63 (4), Wayne State University Press, 2021, p. 319
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Penny, 1981; T.C., 1975 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; David Wojnarowicz, 1981; Cookie Mueller, 1981; Larry Ree (I), 1975 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Georg Osterman (Backstage, Eunuchs of the Forbidden City, Ridiculous Theatrical Company), Westbeth, New York, 1973
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
This is the first exhibition to take on the full breadth of Peter Hujar’s later photography. Hujar was a central figure in the downtown scene of 1970s and early 80s New York, but at his death in 1987 from AIDS-related pneumonia his work was largely unknown to a broader art world. Now it is widely admired for its austere elegance and emotional charge. Hujar’s principal concern was with forms of portraiture – of his friends and denizens of the downtown scene, whom he encountered on the street, shot in his apartment studio or sought out backstage. He also turned his attention to animals, whom he photographed with particular empathy, as well as to architectural, landscape and street photography.
Eyes Open in the Dark concentrates on his later work, when his emergence from a debilitating depression in 1976 brought about a new expansiveness. The exhibition also reveals the darkening tone of his photography in the early 1980s, as the AIDS crisis devastated his community, and his work entered into dialogue with the younger artist David Wojnarowicz. Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark is curated by Hujar’s biographer John Douglas Millar, and Hujar’s close friend, the artist and master printer Gary Schneider, with Raven Row’s director Alex Sainsbury. As well as lifetime prints it will include prints of little-known works specially prepared by Gary Schneider, working closely with the artist’s Estate.
Text from Raven Row
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – White Turkey, Pennsylvania, 1985 (below); Leroy Street, West Village, New York, 1976; Nicolas Abdallah Moufarrege, Paris, 1980; John Flowers (Backstage, Palm Casino Revue, New York), 1974 (below) Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Cow (Barbed Wire), Hyrkin Farm, Westtown, New York, 1978
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
White Turkey, Pennsylvania
1985
Gelatin silver print
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
John Flowers (Backstage, Palm Casino Revue)
1974
Gelatin silver print
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Stephen Varble (III), Soho, New York
1976
Gelatin silver print
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Stephen Lloyd Varble (American, 1946-1984) was a notorious American performance artist, playwright, and fashion designer in lower Manhattan during the 1970s. His work challenged mainstream conceptions of gender and exposed the materialism of the established, institutionalised world.
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Jose Arango (Backstage, Palm Casino Revue, New York), 1974 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; John Erdman and Gary Schneider, Monhonk Mountain House, New Paltz, New York, 1984 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Horse, West Virginia, 1969 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; David Brintzenhofe, 1983 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Paul Hudson, 1979; Butch and Buster, Hyrkin Farm, Westtown, New York, 1978 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Boy Crying, 1979; Ethyl Eichelberger (II), 1981 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Sarah Jenkins, NY (II), 1984; Paul Thek (II), 1975
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Ethyl Eichelberger (II), 1981 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Sarah Jenkins, NY (II), 1984; Paul Thek (II), 1975; Self-Portrait (II), 1975 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Ann Wilson (III), 1975; Lavinia Co-op, 1980
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Lola Pashalinski, 1974 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Bill Elliot, 1974; Gary Schneider (I), 1979 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Girl Sleeping in Doorway, 1976
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Torso (Pascal Imbert), 1980; Manny, Manny and Vince, 1981 Collection Vince Aletti; Keith Cameron, 1981 Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman; Donkey, Italy, 1978; Nude, 1978; Lynn Davis, 1985
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
This is the first exhibition to take on the full breadth of Peter Hujar’s later photography. Hujar was a central figure in the downtown scene of 1970s and early 80s New York, but at his death in 1987 from AIDS-related pneumonia his work was largely unknown to a broader art world. Now it is widely admired for its austere elegance and emotional charge.
Hujar’s principal concern was with forms of portraiture – of his friends and denizens of the downtown scene, whom he encountered on the street, shot in his apartment studio or sought out backstage. He also turned his attention to animals, whom he photographed with particular empathy, as well as to architectural, landscape and street photography. Eyes Open in the Dark concentrates on his later work, when his emergence from a debilitating depression in 1976 brought about a new expansiveness. The exhibition also reveals the darkening tone of his photography in the early 1980s, as the AIDS crisis devastated his community, and his work entered into dialogue with the younger artist David Wojnarowicz.
Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark is curated by Hujar’s biographer John Douglas Millar, and Hujar’s close friend, the artist and master printer Gary Schneider, with Raven Row’s director Alex Sainsbury. As well as lifetime prints it will include prints of little-known works specially prepared by Gary Schneider, working closely with the artist’s Estate.
The exhibition is free to attend and open Wednesday to Sunday, 11am to 6pm, no booking required. Please note that some images in this exhibition feature explicit sexual content.
Text from the Raven Row website
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Richie Gallo (Backstage, The Life & Times of Joseph Stalin,
Brooklyn Academy of Music)
1973
Gelatin silver print
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Person in Veil (Backstage, The Life & Times of Joseph Stalin, Brooklyn Academy of Music)
1973
Gelatin silver print
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Canal Street Pier, New York (Stairs)
1983
Gelatin silver print
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing Andy Warhol’s Peter Hujar [ST156], 1964; Peter Hujar [ST157], 1964; Peter Hujar [ST158], 1964; Peter Hujar [ST159], 1964 Collection of The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Paul Thek, Oakleyville, Fire Island, New York, 1967; Self-Portrait (II), 1980; Self-Portrait (I), 1980
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing at centre, Paul Thek, Florida, 1957
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Self-Portrait (III), 1980 (below); Self-Portrait, 1958; Paul Thek, Oakleyville, Fire Island, New York, 1973
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
Self-Portrait
1980
Gelatin silver print
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Peter Hujar’s David Wojnarowicz, 1985; David Wojnarowicz’s photographs of Peter Hujar, Untitled, 1987 showing Hujar in his death bed. Collection of Gary Schneider and John Erdman
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Bruce de Sainte Croix, 1976; Bruce de Sainte Croix, 1976; Bruce de Sainte Croix, 1976
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Hudson River (III), 1976; East River (II), 1976; Hudson River (IV), 1976
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing from left to right – Christopher Street Pier #5, New York, 1976; Christopher Street Pier #4, New York, 1976; Christopher Street Pier #1, New York, 1976; Easter Sunday, St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, 1976
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing David Wojnarowicz’s Untitled, from Sex Series (for Marion Scemama), 1989 Courtesy of The Estate of David Wojnarowicz and PPOW, New York
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
David Wojnarowicz (American, 1954-1992)
Untitled
1989
From Sex Series (for Marion Scemama) 1988-1989
Gelatin silver print
One of Wojnarowicz’s most remarkable pieces here is the “Sex Series (for Marion Scemama),” a miracle of technical prowess and visual intensity. Wojnarowicz began it in 1988, a year after the photographer Peter Hujar, his close friend and former lover, died of AIDS. These photomontages combine stock photographs with circular insets salvaged from Hujar’s porn collection [among other insets of, for example, police, medical, money, religion and life], which he’d thrown away after his diagnosis.
Much of Wojnarowicz’s work is about sex in an age of death. During the AIDS crisis, sexual activity, particularly that of gay men, was demonized. Resisting the dogma and censorship of the Right’s conservatism and the Left’s moralism alike, the “Sex Series” vibrates with anxious and desirous energy, a mood amplified by the eerie reversal of the printing process, in which light and dark have been inverted to create a near negative.
Olivia Laing. “Brush Fires in the Social Landscape,” on the Book Forum website April/May 2015 [Online] Cited 14/03/2025
Installation view of the exhibition Peter Hujar – Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row, London showing Contact sheets, 18 April, Easter Sunday, 1976
© 2025 the Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, DACS London, Pace Gallery, NY, Fraenkel Gallery, SF, Maureen Paley, London, and Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
Photo: Marcus J Leith
Raven Row
56 Artillery Lane
London e1 7ls
Opening hours:
Wednesday to Sunday 11am – 6pm