PETER HUJAR @ Paul Kasmin Gallery

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PETER HUJAR @ Paul Kasmin Gallery

January 16th, 2016 by fstop

PETER HUJAR: LOST DOWNTOWN
January 28 – February 27, 2016

Opening reception: Thursday, January 28, 6 – 8 PM

Hujar’s early work as a fashion photographer furnished a deft skill in working with models and an intuitive understanding of the power of the pose, resulting in perfectly composed pictures. He chose sitters who were uninhibited in front of the camera, ranging from casual acquaintances to close friends and intimate lovers. Together they describe the personalities and charisma of the downtown scene of the late 70s and early 80s, a coterie of artists, performers, drag queens, misfits, writers and musicians. Lost Downtown is a playbill of the characters that inhabited the same few blocks of the Lower East Side as Hujar. Portraits in the exhibition include David Wojnarowicz, Paul Thek, John Waters, Edwin Denby, Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz, and William Burroughs. As Stephen Koch writes, “It’s a vanished world, and Peter Hujar was right there in it. The Lower East Side between 1972 and 1985 – filled with artists, wannabe artists and hangers-on – was a community of the misbegotten gathered from every town in America and relocated in the mean streets between Broadway and the Bowery. That Downtown is forever gone. Time, gentrification, disease and death took their toll. But before it vanished, its extravagant cast sat for Peter Hujar’s camera – and is now alive again in front of our eyes.”

Paul Kasmin Gallery
297 Tenth Avenue, New York

Location: New York, New York City, United States Type:

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