Nude Self-Portrait, #3

Peter Hujar

1966 · 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 never would 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. He made this compelling self-portrait in a master class taught by Richard Avedon and Marvin Israel that was also attended by Diane Arbus.

Artist

Peter Hujar

Date

1966

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2012