Portraits in life and death
Peter Hujar


Peter Hujar

Portraits in life and death

20 Apr — 24 Nov 2024 at Santa Maria della Pietà in Venice, Italy

7 AUGUST 2024

The Peter Hujar Foundation, New York presents the first exhibition in Europe of Peter Hujar’s legendary Portraits in life and death, a collateral Event of the 60th Esposizione Internationale d’Arte Venice, 2024. 

Comprising the complete set of 41 photographs reproduced in the 1976 book, Portraits in life and death—the only publication Hujar produced during his lifetime, for which his friend, the critic Susan Sontag, penned the introduction—the exhibition will be curated by Grace Deveney, David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography and Media at the Art Institute of Chicago. 






Hujar is renowned for photographing his subjects with penetrating sensitivity and psychological depth. Deeply embedded within the avant-garde milieu of artists, musicians, writers, and performers in downtown New York during the 1970s and early ‘80s, Hujar’s unflinching portraits captured his subjects with astonishing intimacy and vulnerability.

The Estate of Peter Hujar is jointly represented by Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco and Pace Gallery in New York, together with Mai 36 Galerie in Zürich and Maureen Paley in London.

Peter Hujar is best known for his powerful and piercing portraits of personalities, famous and behind the scenes, animals, and wrecked cars. Ranging from glamorous studio portraits to dark images in catacombs, Hujar’s work is known for the texture and poignancy with which he explores decay, sexuality, death, and the life we share in common. As Nan Goldin writes, “His pictures are exotic but not in a shallow, sensational way. Looking at his photographs of nude men, even of a naked baby boy, is the closest I ever came to experience what it is to inhabit male flesh. His photographs of animals have that same rare empathy, they are like highly personal portraits.”

In 2024, the Ukrainian Museum in New York presented Peter Hujar: rialto, featuring photographs from the first part of Hujar’s career, from 1955 to 1969. His work has been the subject of retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Fotomuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland. In 2005–2006 PS1 exhibited an important survey of Hujar’s work, and in 2007 the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London mounted a substantial exhibition. In January 2017, a major touring retrospective opened at Barcelona’s Fundación MAPFRE, accompanied by an expansive catalogue. The exhibition traveled to Fotomuseum The Hague, The Morgan Library & Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, and the Wexner Center for the Arts.