Peter Hujar's Contact Sheets Published in New Book and Exhibition

A new book and exhibition, both titled 'Hujar: Contact', delve into 5,783 contact sheets by photographer Peter Hujar, stored in eight banker boxes at The Morgan Library & Museum. Curator Joel Smith and archivist Olivia McCall discuss the artistic and personal intimacy of these sheets, which reveal Hujar's creative process through marks, crop annotations, and annotations. The contact sheets, spanning his entire career, show his use of twin-lens 120mm and 35mm cameras, and feature recurring subjects like Linda Rosenkrantz, Fran Lebowitz, John Erdman, Lynn Davis, Joseph Raffael, Paul Thek, Greer Lankton, and David Wojnarowicz. The sheets document his downtown New York social world and his relationships. Hujar died of AIDS in 1987 at age 53. The book is published by Mack, and the exhibition runs at The Morgan Library & Museum until October 25, 2026.