Girl in My Hallway

Peter Hujar

1976 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Before his death from AIDS at age 53, Hujar was an influential figure in New York’s downtown demimonde. He made portraits of other artists, writers, and performers, as well as street scenes, sad and mysterious pictures of animals, landscapes, and nude studies. His work is held together less by subject or style than by a particular sensibility: intimate and somber, carnal though formally refined, cool yet oddly emotional—like a sad song with a good beat. This tightly framed photograph of a girl passed out in the artist’s hallway captures the gritty glamour of the East Village scene in the 1970s, reflecting on excess and its aftermath.

Artist

Peter Hujar

Date

1976

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2006