Man in Park

Peter Hujar

1981 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Before his death from AIDS in 1987 at age fifty-three, Hujar was an influential figure in New York's downtown demimonde. (Nan Goldin once said she would never have become a photographer if it had not been for Hujar.) Hujar's photographic work is held together less by subject or style than by a particular sensibility: intimate and somber, carnal yet formally refined, cool yet oddly emotional, like a sad song with a good beat. Hujar spent many nights wandering the streets of downtown Manhattan with his camera, creating images that exude a sense of expectation and desire. This photograph is one of three that he made of men cruising in Stuyvesant Square Park, a few blocks from his loft on Second Avenue.

Artist

Peter Hujar

Date

1981

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2011