Peter Hujar Editor & Author

Peter Hujar died of AIDS in 1987, leaving behind a complex and profound body of photographs. A leading figure in the cultural scene in downtown New York in the 1970s and ’80s, Hujar was admired for his portraits of people, animals, and landscapes. Since his death his work has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, and he is included in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Peter Hujar died of AIDS in 1987, leaving behind a complex and profound body of photographs. A leading figure in the cultural scene in downtown New York in the 1970s and ’80s, Hujar was admired for his portraits of people, animals, and landscapes. Since his death his work has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, and he is included in permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Philip Gefter is the author of Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe (2014), a biography of Sam Wagstaff, and Photography After Frank (Aperture, 2009), a book of essays about photography. He produced the 2011 documentary Bill Cunningham New York. Gefter was on staff at the New York Times for fifteen years, where he wrote regularly about photography. He is currently at work on a biography of Richard Avedon. Joel Smith is the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. Steve Turtell is a poet and the author of Heroes and Householders (2009) and Letter to Frank O’Hara (2011), which won the 2010 ReBound Chapbook Prize given by Seven Kitchens Press. He is currently working on Peter Hujar: Invisible Master. Martha Scott Burton acted as Curatorial Assistant for the exhibition and publication of Peter Hujar: Speed of Life. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin.