Peter Hujar was an American photographer best known for his black and white portraits. He died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987, at the age of 53. Now, his work is being showcased at The Morgan Library & Museum in an exhibit titled Peter Hujar: Speed of Life.
Hujar first started taken photos in the early 1950s and continued doing so right up until his death. His work often depicted queer people and other outcasts living on the fringes of society.
Related: Fetish photographer talks about being paid to photograph escorts doing chemsex
Peter Hujar: Speed of Life will run through May 2o and showcases over 160 of Hujar’s portraits and snapshots, including avant-garde nudes, drag queens, Bohemian queers, friends, and lovers.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Joel Smith, who curated the exhibition, said of Hujar, “He was an artist for whom the portrait defined what art could be. Everything he photographed he wanted to bring across with clarity, empathy and respect for the life behind the mask.”
Related: PHOTOS: Photographer Luis Movilla documents the beauty in male imperfections and homosexual desire
Here’s how Hujar explained his own work: “I make direct, uncomplicated photographs of complicated and difficult subjects. I photograph those who push themselves to any extreme and people who cling to the freedom to be themselves.”
h/t: New Yorker
o.codone
Looks promising.
Josh447
There were no “queer 70s”, that term was not used to describe gays at that time. Just gay was used as the descriptive term.
“Queer” describing gays is more 2000s and is a slanderous term and still used as such.
pierscik
Josh…I’m not sure how old you are but if you were in your teens or twenties in the 70’s and living in an urban environment surely you will recall that Queer was very much the word being used to describe homosexuals at that time, as well as ‘gay’….
ctotogo
It’s not the 70’s anymore. Describing them as the “queer 70’s” in 2018 is fine.
dwes09
Sorry. You are wrong. Queer was used by those who hated us, and when used by us it was similarly a pejorative. There were no “queer” organizations, there was no “queer theory”, there was no use of “queer people”.
I grew up in New York City, was very much in places like GLF events both in NYC and at university in the late 60’s, and moved to San Francisco in the mid 70’s. NOBODY used the word queer except as a put down in the same way we would refer to someone as “Mary” or “queen”.
It is still largely a pejorative to me and I will not allow heterosexuals to refer to me that way under any circumstances just as i would not let antisemites call me a kike.
ctotogo
I have as much mileage as you honey. I’m just not offended by the words of strangers. In 2018, use of the word queer is fine. It’s fine even if you don’t agree with me.
ctotogo
You realize of course we’re having this discussion on QUEERty.com. *smh*
happiness17
The definition of queer is strange. It’s an insult to have that word used to
describe gays.
dwes09
I absolutely understand i am having a discussion on “Queerty” and the irony of the name is not lost on me (my turn to shake my head at you mister). It is a blog for a very specific audience, and as such certainly you see the people who come here specifically to harass and disparage us, not infrequently masquerading as gay.
But the fact remains that those who think you (us) less human, more sinner, or simply sick are going to call you queer and fag, not gay. And they often think our use of it is an acknowledgement that we think ourselves odd or abnormal. There is no “reclaiming” a word intended to convey hate and disgust.
IanHunter
Originally meaning “strange” or “peculiar”, queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century.
dwes09
What Josh says above it absolutely correct . Nobody referred to themselves as queer in the 70’s. It was an epithet to us as it was to the straight people most likely to use it. There were no queer 1970’s except to those who opposed the increased visibility of gay and lesbian folks. Let’s please leave the revisionist history and twisted use of words to the regressives who are so good at making shit up.
And there is currently no real consensus among lgbt people about the use of Queer: especially when it is so embraced by both those who oppose equality for lgbt folks, and by heterosexuals who simply want some outre way to label their self-conscious non-conformity.
ctotogo
Who’s to say what the consensus is. We’d have to have intimate knowledge of how about what, 700,000,000 people feel about it? We don’t. We have our opinions, maybe we’re aware of how some of our friends feel about it. But that’s about it.
Heywood Jablowme
“We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!”
Not the ’70s, true, but that’s a chant from the mid-to-late 1980s that Peter Hujar no doubt heard.
I remember being a little startled when I first heard queer being “reclaimed” in the ’80s, but I’ve had 30+ years to “get used to it” so it no longer sounds strange. It really doesn’t fit the ’70s though.
Tobi
It’s also seems entirely forgotten that the use of the word “straight” means that we’re “bent”.
Kangol
So great to see Peter Hujar mentioned on here. He was one of the major gay photographic talents of the late 1950s through his death in 1987, and his images of the 1970s bring back how long-lost worlds. His late boyfriend, David Wojnarowicz, also was a very talented writer and artist too.
I especially love the photo of Isaac Hayes, who wasn’t gay but was a major musical artist and cultural icon, above.
AlbertW
I agree. Looking at Peter’s work I see a man who thinks and is not in the least shallow, jaded, or judgemental. I believe he saw life as a beautiful lesson.
Marvella
Ladies,
We do protest too much! It’s true queer was an insult in the 70s. That’s why we took it back in the late 80s and early 90s. Our use of Queer was meant to be the inclusive term for anyone who was not heteronormative. You could be straight and queer just as you could be gay and not queer. For some of us who never found Mary or queen insults, but terms of endearment and who found “gay” to be cliquish and exclusive, queer was a welcome new term. Long live Queer Nation!
CastleSF
“gay” is a perfect term for homosexuals. Stop demonizing it and stop using moronic terms like heteronormative, which is so outlandish and derogatory.
Kangol
Sour Sister #2, CastleSF, you probably should pay a bit more attention to words like “heteronormative” and “hormonormative,” because you are deeply in their thrall. Heteronormativity is real, it’s not “outlandish” (it’s the principle, however shaky, on which contemporary American sexual and social relations are organized), and it’s hardly derogatory, unless you’re defending it and worried that someone is criticizing it. We get that you and Danny have very rigid ideas about what gay people are, how we should behave, etc., but thankfully, people fought and died so that we would not be under your or anyone else’s respectability rules.
Danny595
Gross. It’s like pics of the Pompeii, before Vesuvius erupted and took them all down. This was the peak of commercialized hyper-promiscuity, the destroyer of gay life, health and happiness. The only good thing about looking at this crap is feeling gratitude that I wasn’t around to experience any of it.
CastleSF
What I dislike so much about the 70’s gays is their tight short shorts – often torn with holes. Those shorts are so disgusting and unbecoming.
DrewD
Trust me, we’re grateful you weren’t there either.
Tobi
Danny, you missed the greatest party on earth, I’m glad you weren’t around for it too.
CastleSF
Those of us who are normal gay guys feel quite fortunate about not being around in the 70s because people engaged in promiscuous and reckless behaviors back then were gone by the 90s, and for obvious reasons.
mujerado
No, CastleSF, not everyone who was promiscuous in the 70s is “gone”, and speaking now about “normal gay guys” is different in degree only, not in kind, from straight people speaking of themselves as normal and gay guys as abnormal. We didn’t all get AIDS or STDs, Castle, surprise surprise. It always makes me sad for the activists of the past to see gay guys of today misunderstanding our own past. Please, educate yourself. We weren’t all the promiscuous, filthy perverts you might read about in history books.
Nowuvedoneit
You’re not even gay, you’re a troll coming on here to talk and cause a ruckus.
Kangol
I knew Sour Sister Danny would chime in. She would have screeched and pooh-poohed all the activism that made it possible for her to parade around on her puritanical hobbyhorse. Girl, seriously, give it a rest!
Danny595
Mujerado – Thanks for your comment. It’s true that not every gay and bi guy was promiscuous back then. But it was rampant and highly destructive. Those who wanted nothing to do with promiscuity had the choice of being celibate, pursuing committed relationships with no external support and despite active discouragement from the wider society, or giving in and joining the “party.”
Although data from that period are sketchy, we do have a few surveys and we have data from large-scale testing for a Hepatitis B vaccine in multiple cities. We also have other historical data on HIV prevalence. What these data show is that in cities, where the gay community existed, hyper-promiscuity was rampant, as were many STIs. By the early 1980s, promiscuity had spread HIV widely and seroprevalence was so great (approaching 50%) that every urban gay male was at severe risk, even if he was not promiscuous. This is why it is a lie to say that promiscuity is really only an individual choice and is nobody else’s business. That choice put everyone at risk. We went from a seroprevalance of less than 1% in the mid-1970s to saturation levels in 1985, an “achievement” which would not have been possible without promiscuity. In rural and suburban areas, where there was no promiscuity-promoting gay “community,” seroprevalance was much lower, something which is even true today.
The health outcomes of the men who lived the hyper-promiscuous life were grim. You should read medical journal articles from back then, even pre-AIDS. These are scientific articles with a minimum of editorializing and moral judgment, but the shock and alarm of the authors comes right off the page. No one should ever romanticize this depraved period in history. Promiscuity is not “liberatory” or progressive or revolutionary. It’s selfish, destructive and cruel We should be happy that the worst of it peaked in the late 1970s and that things have been improving ever since. Since the beginning of this century, and particularly since 2004, monogamy has been on an unrelenting surge. Let this trend continue, let us all witness promiscuity’s doom, and let’s look to the past as a lesson in how not to live.
Nowuvedoneit
Danny595, you seem to be happy that as you said promiscuity died down after the 70’s and let’s see what cane about during that time? HIV and AIDS. You’re the worst kind of gay blaming people for being promiscuous and then lauding the effects of HIV, because as you said it died down.
HIV is not a punishment for sleeping by around , nor is it something to be ashamed of. It is a disease much like your thought processes. The nerve of some people.
DrewD
How sad that someone (who wasn’t even around during that “crap”) can read a few stats and then decide what the morality of the gay community should be. If you want to remain monogamous or asexual then be so. I’m really not sure what purpose your comments serve.
JoeyRamone
What a bunch of pussies here. You’re not men, you’re little girls. OMG the tight shorts. Gross. Sex with Strangers. Ewwww. Btw, that tight shirt ain’t doing it for you either.
DrewD
The fact that you even mentioned the tight shirt tells us all we need to know about you, Joey.
Danny595
Nowuvedoneit – HIV – or the spread of it – is a consequence of promiscuity, not a “punishment” from some divine being. Jumping off a cliff means you are going to break some bones; it doesn’t mean that Yahweh is punishing you. It’s true that the decline of promiscuity is a good thing, but it was not driven entirely or even mostly by HIV. That helped expedite things, but the real declines which took place around the turn of the century were driven by a variety of factors, including greater external support, the diminuition of social consequences for being out and in an open relationship, the rise of life expectations, greater parental involvement in the lives of G/B youth, and, of course, the prospect of marriage and family. Unfortunately, these social changes take much longer to work themselves out than political changes. And we have commercial entities, such as this website, bars, baths, and the various hookup apps, which have a vested interest in slowing down the trend towards monogamy and away from promiscuity. But they can’t stop the moving train!
DrewD – The purpose my comments serve is to disrupt the cheery, happy lie that long-term promiscuity is a big party, that it’s good for gay and bi men and boys, and/or that it is a life choice which is just as good and deserving of respect as any other. That’s a lie. So I’ll call it out when I see it. I’m not advocating criminalizing promiscuity, but I don’t have to sit silently while it is falsely presented as something good.
DrewD
Are you stating that because Tobi said it was the greatest party on earth? Where are you getting this cheery, happy lie? A big party that’s good for gay and bi men and boys?
One’s sexual activity (or lack of it) is a personal choice. A choice that is between consenting adults. Comment away but you are not going to change people.
By the way, I have been in a monogamous relationship for 33 years. I was promiscuous before then, which was my own choice, not because it was “falsely presented as something good”.
I never judge how others live their lives but you certainly seem up to the task. You would have fit in perfectly with Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell.
Mark
Perhaps a more realistic reason for the habits of that era involved the fact that a gay teen had no guidelines for ‘dating’ outside of ‘don’t get caught’ which generally meant do whatever you can get away with in any dark secluded place you can find. Bars, parks, sleazy motels… anywhere that provided anonymity and made it wasy to get away quickly. When you create an atmosphere of hate and fear, that is what you get.
Marvella
Sick to death of assimilationist A-gays? Queers read this!
http://gaycitynews.nyc/still-queer-message-floods-pride-parade/
Danny595
lol! That’s not a link to the document. You can’t link to it because those “queers” are such out-of-touch old dinosaurs that they only distributed the document in paper form and never uploaded it to the internet! What a bunch of sad old losers. loool!
Heywood Jablowme
The photos don’t seem at all “promiscuous,” never mind “gross”.
The “devil” sitting in a toilet stall… well, that’s obviously a Halloween-style joke. I doubt that ANYONE, no matter how promiscuous they are or were, would find that photo to be sexually stimulating.
A bunch of guys standing on a pier… hmm, that’s not “promiscuous” either. Only one of them even has his shirt off? Arty, maybe, but… ho-hum.
An arty photo of a guy’s legs, while he lounges on a pier. Ho-hum.
An arty photo of a nude guy rolled up into a neat yoga pose. Mildly sexy I guess.
An arty photo of a heterosexual soul singer. Not exactly driving anyone to promiscuity.
Drag queens… oh I realize Danny595 just HATES drag queens… but drag queens were (and are) comical. They are not a sexual turn-on for any gay guy; they’re just amusing.
Danny’s monomania is off-topic here.
The1970s
Some of the most strident criticism of the sexual conduct of urban Gay men in the 70s lacks extremely important context. The critics were not there. They did not grow up in the previous decade, the 1960s, which was as Gay positive as previous decades. In other words utterly hostile.
I remember two fellows who lived near me when I was younger. They were both Gay. They never went into the Gay bars nearest them lest someone see them (of course who would see them? Other Gay men). Instead when they went out to socialize in a public Gay environment in a town a few hours away. That was one form of the Closet.
The 1970s was the first time in the nations history when a Gay man could enjoy his sexuality. For the first time shame was not the ultimate driving emotion where sexuality was concerned. It was still present for many if not most. But its power to drive men deep into the closet diminished with each passing year.
Sex was one way of shouting NO MORE oppression. No more treating us as subhuman. Sex claimed our fundamental identities not just as Gay people, but as human beings. Because it was the fundamental nature of our sexuality which has been denied for millennia.
So one of the collective responses was the opportunity and pleasure to enjoy our sexuality. Add the fact that the male mammal seems strongly inclined to frequent and even anonymous sex. Further add that there were (and still are) not healthy social supports that help make sexual monogamy work, or support health sexual enjoyment not in a relationship. Straight people developed (unhealthy) structures for managing the sexual drive. Structures that often fail, especially among the most strident of its supporters. Nothing of the sort existed for Gay men.
Need to blame someone for the outbreak of AIDS and the prevalence of Hepatitis and STDs? How about blaming the members of straight society that condemned homosexuals to suffer self-denial, shame, violence and even medical torture in the name of “curing” people of their homosexuality. The school leaders, religious teachers, so-called mental health professionals and politicians that supported unhealthy definitions and management of sexuality. They are still around (and remain the most guilty of violating the very rules they claim to impose).
Moralizing over a pair of very short, and sexual jeans is shallow.
As for the words straight and bent: Ever see the play Bent? I saw it the night before a Christopher Street Day Parade. The most powerful play I have yet to see to date. By the end the packed Broadway theater emptied without a sound from an audience member (after the groans of terror and tears and standing ovation for one of the best performances of many lives). Yes it was called Bent. It makes the point far more eloquently than I can about the terror by straight society of Gay people until we said NO MORE.
CastleSF
@the1970s. You seem to look at the era of your prime years with too much fondness and too little objectivity. It was an era of depraved debauchery, cruising in the parks and dark alleys, sleazy bars with back rooms of seething sexuality, sex clubs and bathhouses where unsafe, unspeakable, and anonymous sexual practices went rampant. The victimhood that you have been carrying all these years is all too real. Thank God those sleazy leather bars and bathhouses have mostly been closed and replaced by wine bars or restaurants most suitable for the millennials and the younger generation.
Kangol
@CastleSF, you’re starting to sound like a parody of a sex-phobic, repressed homophobe. Consenting adults having gay sex as they please really terrifies you, doesn’t it?
CastleSF
Capitalizing “G” in every “gay” word used in your comment is just super creepy as if gays are somehow above other people and deserve special treatment. Another victim mentality from the 70’s that doesn’t serve the best interests of younger gays.
alanballs
my, my….reading through (the snide, sarcastic) Queerty comments, and I’m overcome with gratitude that not only was I not around in the 70’s, I also don’t live in the USA. Is the “gay community” in the USA really as divided as the Queerty comment sections would make one believe? Or are you all just a special bunch of gay people?
alanballs
One More Thing: @CastleSF: please dismount your self-righteous soap box. Another thing for which I’m grateful, is that you and I live on different continents.
SiamSam
Yep, lots of temper tantrums from the promiscuity pimps. The truth hurts.
BigDavidO
As a Co-founder of the first gay community health clinic (in the early 70s) and subsequently a principal investigator for both the multi-site HepB epidemiology and vaccine development studies and the Multisite AIDS Cohort Study (the MACS) that continues to this day, I am saddened that largely ignorant persons can distort the results of those studies (and the LGBTQ communities’ heroic struggles to survive those epidemics while preserving our diverse lifestyles) into condemnations of non-monogamous persons. These comments go far beyond the usual sanctimonious and snarky Queerty comments, and reveal a level of self-hate that is, IMHO, a most pernicious internalized remnant of homophobia. And having “come out” in the early 70s, I can appreciate the brutal honesty of Peter Hugar’s photography and the renewed interest in his work that the Morgan Museum exhibition has created.