Peter Hujar was one of the most important and influential New York photographers of the 1970s and 1980s, an artist whose reputation has steadily grown since his death in 1987. Born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1934, Peter Hujar received his first camera in 1947.

Hujar was a contemporary and friend of Diane Arbus, and both were admirers of Weegee and shared his dark vision. Regardless of subject matter… Hujar is a classicist whose distinctive style echoes further back to historical figures such as Eugène Atget and Brassaï. Hujar was a mentor, friend, and lover to the artist and writer David Wojnarowicz, and his work would go on to influence the photographers Nan Goldin and Robert Mapplethorpe. His sensibility, concentration, eye for detail, and feel for light and texture enable him to find, as both Atget and Brassaï in Paris before him, mystery where none is apparent, beauty in the mundane, and grace in disintegration. All of Hujar's work is imbued with a deep sense of mortality, and, as he makes visible an awareness of life and death as forever enmeshed, a depth of soul. (excerpt from MoMA PS1 Peter Hujar exhibition announcement 2005)