Peter Hujar was an American photographer known for his striking, intimate, humane portraits of artists, writers, performers and New York’s queer downtown scene from the 1960s to the early 1980s.
Though an underground talent in his lifetime, he is now regarded as one of the most influential portraitists of the late 20th century, photographing, among others, John Waters, Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz, Candy Darling, William S Burroughs and David Wojnarowicz, whose later work is inextricable from Hujar’s influence.
When Hujar died of Aids-related complications in 1987, at the age of 53, Wojnarowicz photographed him on his deathbed, creating images that became emblematic of the Aids crisis.
Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day, his follow-up to Passages (one of The Irish Times’ top films of 2023), maintains a leisurely pace, despite its short length.
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Adapted from a rediscovered 1974 transcript, the film takes place over a single winter’s day in New York, when the writer Linda Rosenkrantz invited her friend Hujar, then a little-known photographer, to recount in microscopic detail what he’d done the day before.
Alex Ashe’s camera simply hangs out with them – Rosenkrantz is played with softly spoken, sharp wit by Rebecca Hall, Hujar with irresistible volatility by Ben Whishaw – as they talk, smoke, gossip, gripe and occasionally dance their way through the afternoon light of her Upper East Side apartment.
Nothing much happens, yet everything is revealed. Hujar riffs on art, sex, freelancing debts, the peculiarities of his sleep habits and, memorably, the disastrous New York Times shoot with Allen Ginsberg that became an odyssey bookended by Ginsberg’s suggestion that Hujar perform oral sex on Burroughs.
Whishaw’s performance is a theatrical masterclass in controlled ramble; Hall’s is the art of listening, with responses that range from concern to a slightly cocked head. Their chemistry enlivens the most throwaway anecdote. Come into their parlour.
Peter Hujar’s Day is in cinemas from Friday, January 2nd
