Hujar Contact

by Joel Smith, Peter Hujar (Artist)

Genres: Photography

352 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2026

About the author

Joel Smith is the Fisher Curator at Vassar College, a former fellow in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1995-1997), and the author of Edward Steichen: The Early Years (Metropolitan Museum of Art / Princeton University Press, 1999).

Reviews

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book for the Hujar show now at the Morgan. I found it on a bench at the exhibit and ended up reading through the whole thing -- ironically, the images were easier for my struggling eyes to read than many of the images on the wall.

Hujar was very secure in the significance of his art that he kept meticulous records of his contact sheets, how he chose images, all his daily shoots and so on. He is one of many artists lost to the scourge of AIDS. At the Morgan, the curator noted that Hujar was diagnosed January 1 1987 and immediately ceased all photographic activity. He died in November. I could not believe that someone so ambitious and prolific would completely stop, and it speaks to the horror that was AIDS-- not just Hujar's individual loss but the impact on an entire generation of artists.

[Sondre Melzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are these two photographs - amongst the many that I have not seen before - from the Palermo catacombs, where next to the glass plain coffin with an exposed human scull, is Paul Thek, standing tall and handsome. It did not cross my mind that he was in fact there with him. Upon seeing it I got a profound painful sting somewhere in the spine, serendipity then maybe, now it gleams of prophecy.

Had there been a Manhattan catacomb it would be filled with the people in this book - and it would have been a hall of talent